Draft: Paradox and contrivance, irony and insight: Developing a sense of place in seventh grade science in a strange land*

Richard Frazier
Central Missouri State University—Warrensburg, MO

I have a wish for humanity: that all of our children would become field naturalists as they grow up. Imagine living in a society where every youth has the chance to explore the earth on foot and in hand, getting to know its creatures on a first-name basis. (Gary Paul Nabhan in “Behind the Zipper: Discovering the Diversity around Us,” 1997, p. 97)

Every living being has a personality and a right to life. 
(Jane Goodall, Screening of IMAX film, Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees, for teachers at the Kansas City Zoo, March 3, 2003.)

And therein, perhaps, lies Singapore's real importance. The overt goal of the national IT2000 initiative is a simple one: to sustain indefinitely, for a population of 2.8 million, annual increases in productivity of three to four percent. (William Gibson in “Disneyland with the Death Penalty,” 1993)

It was something she could see in her mind’s eye. This giant would have been the tallest, most immortal thing on its mountain—until the day a fungal blight stepped off a ship in some harbor, grinned at America, and took down every chestnut tree from New York to Alabama. A whole landscape could change, just like that. (Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer, 2000)	

Some fragments in the place of a biased introduction.

Motherhood, mammary, language, and memory.
I was born in Missouri. My father’s father had moved from northeastern Arkansas into the Bootheel. He had acquired land and built a cotton gin. After my father finished his residency in inner city St. Louis, we moved back to my father’s hometown where he began practicing medicine. My wife’s family had lived in the same town for several generations. In grade school we students learned the state song whose lyrics have since been changed. What once read, “When I was a Pick-a-ninny on ma Mammy’s knee,” now says “When I was a little child on my mommy’s knee” (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, 2001). The public schools in our town became integrated when I was in seventh grade. Lincoln School was closed.

Some years later as Peace Corps Volunteers at the end of the road in rural Sierra Leone, we first heard Prince Nico Mbarga’s popular tune, “Sweet Mother.” A powerful stanza in the song is rendered in Nigerian pidgin:

When I dey cry, my mother go carry me--she go say, 
”My pikin, wetin you dey cry ye, ye, 
Stop stop, stop stop 
Make you no cry again, oh." (Mbarga, 1976)

	My wife and I lived among the Mende people in Sierra Leone. Before we had ever dreamed of Africa, we taught in our small hometown, situated near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, where the school population was around 50% African American and 50% European American. Doctors then had told us we would very likely never have children. Since that time doctors have arrived in the area from the Philippines, Taiwan, Iran and elsewhere.
When we first arrived in Njala Komboya, the village at the end of the road, several of the older women told my wife, upon greeting her, that she would not leave Njala alone. 

	A little more than a year after we arrived, my wife became pregnant. She had traveled to a hospital eight hours away and remained incredulous at the diagnosis even when she returned. Before we announced the news to our friends and colleagues in the village, older women, upon greeting my wife, began to feel her breasts, monitor the temperature of her skin, and touch her stomach. “Kpaaa,” they exclaimed, “You get belly,” meaning, “You are with child.”

	During her eighth month, Peace Corps sent my wife back to the U.S. I remained in Sierra Leone to finish the school term covering both our classes and other responsibilities. Our son was born in Missouri, delivered by an obstetrician from Taiwan. When I received news some days later (though there had been a vivid and synchronous birth dream), our school planned a combination birth and going away celebration for me. During the festivities, the name, Bobor Kombo was bestowed on our son. Kombo was the name of the founding warrior of the chiefdom. According to the oral memory, after Kombo had established the settlement, he left. ”Komboya” means “Kombo has left.” (“Njala” means “by the river.”)

	A month or so after little Bobor was born, he was being held by an African American woman who had worked in my wife’s mother’s house for many years. Bobor wanted to nurse and displayed typical primate rooting behavior. Emma laughed and said, “Baby, they ain’t nothing in that ole ninny jug.”

	In Mende, the name of the female breast is “nyini” (Boone, 1986). The purported etymology of “pikin / pickaninny” in the pidgin and creole languages of Africa and the African diaspora is from the Spanish “pequeño niño” or Portuguese “pequenino” (Fyle and Jones, 1980). Some have suggested that the Mende language provided a meaningful conflation between “niño” and “nyini” in the evolution of the term. 

Botanical education on the job, chopping beans, the Johnson Grass Wars.
	When I was in seventh grade, I probably had noticed only a few plants and could describe and name even fewer. There were trees and shrubs in our yard: Mimosa (Albizzia julibrissin), Maple (Acer sp.), Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera), and Wisteria (Wisteria sp.). There were a variety of flowers, a few of which I can remember and name. Sometimes there was a pokeweed bush (Phytolacca americana) that would grow up in a corner not mowed. I knew these plants from their distinctive characteristics and properties. The trees were climbed. The wisteria was harvested for slingshots. Behind the house was a field cultivated in soybeans and winter wheat. Beyond the field was a sandy lane with a colonnade of large trees that included American Elm (Ulmus americana) and Sugarberry (Celtis laevigata). Trumpet vine (Campsis radicans), Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), and pure stands of Giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) filled in the gaps. Down the next fence row there was a very productive Mulberry (Morus rubra) that we would climb and whose ripened fruit we would consume. I could also recognize soybeans, cotton, corn, and wheat. There was a relic forest in our county, an island of immense vine-covered trees surrounded by cropland. We would visit the park on scout trips and church picnics. The huge cross section of what had been a national champion Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) always seemed unreal. Pecan trees (Carya illinoensis) were distinct, too, as they had been left standing in the crop fields after the vast swamp forest of the area had been cleared. Though I could see that there were remnant specimens and populations, I had no awareness at the time that plants had histories.

	On and off through high school and college, I would work as a farmhand for the father of a close friend. One of the typical tasks involved long days in the summer walking rows of soybeans and killing weeds with hoes. Through repetition and correction from the boss, I soon developed “search images” (Lum, 1997) for a variety of weeds. And my vocabulary of recognizable plants doubled. 

	One summer, my friend hired me as his crew in a contract job for the highway department. We were to eradicate Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense) along the county road right of ways. Johnson grass is an exotic and one of the most noxious of invader plants. The plant had been purposefully introduced into the United States (from the Mediterranean region?) in the 1800’s as forage for cattle. We used an arsenic based herbicide and ran up and down the back roads under the inconstant eye of a “Johnson Grass” inspector. Eventually I found myself able to recognize the grass and could even distinguish a patch among other grasses along a section of roadside that had been mown. Johnson grass was the first plant I came to know so intimately, and I was puzzled from the beginning with thoughts of invasion, endemism, disturbance, and succession. I realized that other people would look at a right-of-way and see only nondescript grass. Picking out a species from an indistinguishable background became a valuable act for me—even though it focused on a noxious, invasive weed.

Manioc, Cassava, Tapioca (Missouri, Sierra Leone, Singapore)
	I have very few memories of what happened in the classroom when I was in sixth grade. I do remember going with my class to the room where we would watch scratchy, black and white films. The school building was a big cube. During this time there were sandbags around the base of the building and provisioning for a fallout shelter in the basement. In the particular film I recall, women of the Amazon basin were grating manioc (Manihot esculenta) and squeezing the pulp in some kind of fibrous contraption. The narrator explained that the elaborate processing was required because manioc was poisonous! 

	In Sierra Leone, manioc was called cassava and was grown extensively. The roots were prepared as gari, a grated and dried product, as fufu, a slightly fermented doughy food, as a tortilla-like bread, and as boiled chunks of the root. Even more ubiquitous was a plasas (palaver sauce) made with red palm oil, chili, onion, dried fish, and pounded cassava leaves cooked together and served over rice. This common food was also a favorite among Peace Corps Volunteers and nationals.  Sierra Leoneans are proud of their cuisine and invest their foods with national identity. It dawned on me very slowly that the cassava must have come to Sierra Leone from the Americas by way of the slave trade. 

	We left Sierra Leone in 1978 and arrived in Singapore ten years later. I had not seen cassava for those ten years. While traveling around Singapore in those first few weeks, I kept noticing a plant growing wild in abandoned lots, at forest edges, and along roadways. One day I asked a local teacher at our school if she ever ate cassava or tapioca. She giggled both nervously and nostalgically and said yes, but that it was an occupation food. Apparently when the Japanese invaded Singapore, all rice was appropriated. The citizens could only survive on what they could grow. Cassava/tapioca was planted in every available space. Today, those remnant patches are growing wild. 

	One Thanksgiving while teaching in Singapore, I spent the holiday on a trek with colleagues to a large forest reserve in Malaysia. We had gone deep into the forest, traveling by rough road and then by boat up a river. We stayed in a hut built from forest materials. The thatch for the structure came from the large lance-shaped fronds of an endemic palm. The intention was to trek around the area for the four-day weekend. Torrential rains and a flood reduced the hiking and extended our stay for a day. We managed to make it down stream to a village where forest people had been settled during the “emergency” in Malaya in the 1950’s. The Orang Asli (People of the Place) were generous hosts. They fed us noticeably aged mousedeer and boiled tapioca root. It struck me then how amazing it was that a food that had originated in the tropical garden of the Amazon had somehow traveled around the globe to the other great center of tropical biodiversity. I had watched the film of forest people from South America preparing their indigenous food, and now I was actually consuming the same crop grown and prepared by another group of forest people half a world away.  
	
Tanning the hides of American Bison and Texas Cattle with a plant product that increased its progeny at the expense of tropical forest in Singapore and Malaya. Railroads eat the Ozark forests. Brazilian rubber replaces Southeast Asian forests and the first Fords roll off the assembly line with pneumatic tires.
I wonder if the dates correspond: The transcontinental railroad, the demise of the buffalo, the American Civil War, the population explosion of cattle, the increasing supply of hides, the demand for gambier (Uncaria gambir), the clearing of forests in Singapore and Malaya for plots and for fuel to boil the gambier. The Ozarks are deforested, too, for railway ties and steam. The prairie is replaced with alien plants to feed alien animals. The primeval forests of Southeast Asia are replaced with Hevea brasiliensis. 

While in Singapore I once led a group of expatriates on an excursion to the southeastern corner of the Malay Peninsula (Pengilih). The goal was a hilltop fortification established by the British before World War II. The area was planted in rubber (Hevea brasiliensis); our maps were old and I had been to the place only once before with a group who also had only vague directions. We succeeded in finding the bunkers on the ascent, but when we came down, we lost the trail. Without succumbing to the panic in the eyes of the guests who only seemed to see bewildering green, I noticed a tall tree emergent above the canopy of the rubber. I recognized it as a durian (Durio sp.), the king of fruits for Southeast Asians. I surmised that it had been left standing, like the pecan trees in the soybean fields of Southeast Missouri, and suspected that if people valued the tree, a trail must end or originate near the specimen. I led the group through the bracken, found the trail at the base of the majestic tree, and followed it back out of the plantation. 

Teaching seventh grade science in Singapore. Nature in the schoolyard and neighborhood. Wild classrooms.
In Singapore I ask my expatriate seventh grade students why they are here, in this class, in this school, in this city, in this foreign place. They are third culture kids, global nomads (Carlson, 1997; Shaetti, n.d.; Unseem, 1993). They are bewildered at first, alienated perhaps. "Because our parents brought us here," they reply in chorus. But why are your parents here? "Because of their jobs." But why are their jobs here? "Because of . . ." And soon we are traveling back in time, provoked by the thought that their destinies have been determined by mindless plants, like cloves and nutmegs, tapioca, rubber, and oil palm, whose own accomplishments set them traveling and colonizing. We and they are all partnered in a cascade of symbiotic transformations that blur the boundaries of the exotic and trigger extinctions of the indigenous.
	
	At a conference with other teachers from overseas schools for expatriate children, a colleague (who was teaching in Sumatra) and I lead a discussion of taking students to “Wild Classrooms.” At one point, I say:

For me, now this is somewhat paradoxical, because for me, there are many things that you find in a place like a tropical rainforest or a coral reef which challenge what we know and what we think we know. And I sort of like being humbled--maybe a little bit--uh it's hard to do--it's hard to set that up because a lot of that knowledge I get maybe from people telling me, I don't get it from firsthand information--just from being there. I'll tell one example, which I thought, you know, using the schoolyard, looking at the wild things in the school yard, we did some bird watching at our old campus--actually had pretty good diversity of birds. We'd get about 30 species, and if we did it at the right time of year, we could find about six different species nesting, and nests are good things for beginners to watch because the birds are there, whereas otherwise it's hard to find them. I remember this set of kids watching this Pink-necked pigeon, and they watched it and watched it and watched it.  It was kind of boring because the pigeon just basically sat on the nest all during their morning period.  And they’re back there looking through the books trying to identify it, and one of the kids who happened to be pretty perceptive said, “You know something’s not right here because that bird we saw sitting on the nest looks like this one.” And I said, “Yeah?” And he said, “But that’s the male? Males don’t sit on the nest?”  (laughter) And I said, “Oh they don’t?”  So that discomfort he felt of having his sense of what genders do—and in the bird world there’re all kinds of possibilities just like in the fish world--the plant world’s even more bizarre--and that’s kind of the thing I like. But that’s a kind of paradox because you don’t necessarily get that by just taking kids into the forest, you don’t necessarily see those things.  So there’s this period of getting to the point where you can see things and notice things.  That’s why we’re having a dialog because we don’t have any easy, definite answers. (Frazier and Lane, 2000)

My colleague and I try to capture some of the ironies of our own efforts to use “Wild Classrooms.” An excerpt from Frazier and Lane, 2000, follows:

During a Chinese New Year holiday I accompanied my colleague on a trip he had organized for his sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from a small school for the children of oil company employees into a wild area in Northern Sumatra. There were only 11 students on the trip. Several of the students had gone on a school trip two years before to Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra. There students had carried out surveys under the direction of European, Australian, and Indonesian scientists. 
	After an early morning departure from the school site, a company bus carried four adults and eleven children to a remote site that had been opened only recently for natural gas exploration. A worker who had been involved in the road and gas well construction described seeing wild elephants, tigers, and various other wild species during the early stages. When the site was reached, students unloaded the bus, arranged their things, and met for a briefing. 
	The trip involved one familiarization walk up a logging trail about one to two kilometers into the forest.  A number of smaller trails extended away from the main trail. There was no evidence of motorized travel on the trail, but water buffalo tracks were in abundance. No signs of recent elephant activity were observed. The forest had been selectively logged, but primary forest species were still in evidence. Bird life was abundant and diverse. After the first walk, students discussed their observations and chose a problem or topic of interest. A second walk was conducted where students began to gather information by observation and, in some cases, by collection.  After the evening meal, students went on a night walk along the newly built motor road. A few mammals were spotted from their eye shine. Various frogs, toads, and insects were seen. Many thousands of moths of diverse species congregated around the lights of the gas well facility. Students made another trip to their study site in the morning. Total time in the field was on the order of eight hours over two days. . . .
The moths that congregated around the air compressors intrigued Hal and Vicky. The creatures were incredibly numerous and diverse. The gas well facility serves as a giant moth trap. Evidence of moth diversity was negligible in the forest. The contrast in moth abundance between the man-made environment and the forest created an interesting situation for a wild classroom.  An intrusion in the wild actually created one of the more spectacular opportunities for observing the wild.  In many ways, the moth study embodied a significant paradox of the trip. The road that carried us into remote forest will in all likelihood lead to its demise.  Hal and Vicky wonder where the moths came from and what attracted them to the site.

1.	PL: What we're going to do is kind do it like an interview format and we'll ask you to share your interest and the problem that you were working on and some of the different ideas that you came to.  Hugh and Vicky are going to tell us a little about their project which has to do with moths. And this is probably a good place to record since you can show the air compressors out there. Hal or Vicky, would you tell us to the camera what interested you and the problem that you've been working on?
2.	Hal: Well, when we first got here the thing that really interested me is that we went out to the air compressor over here and we looked and we saw hundreds, literally hundreds of moths. And when we finally did get around to counting them yesterday, we counted 239 moths. And that's what got me excited about this project.
3.	PL: Two hundred and 39 moths and how large was the area they were in?
4.	Hal: It was in an area that was 12 meters by 7.3.
5.	PL: (camera focused on air compressors) This is the area Hal was collecting in. You can see that it's not all that large so to collect 239? 
6.	Hal: Yeah.
7.	PL: Two hundred thirty nine moths in such a small space seems really unusual because when you walk out in the rainforest you certainly don't see that many moths in such a small area. So what's, go ahead with the problems, some of the ideas you had.
8.	Hal: One of problems that I wanted to see was how many moths are there in the day time versus the night time versus some time in the afternoon. And I wanted to see if the time mattered depending on how many moths were there. And I was also just amazed at how many different kinds of moths there were, in the area, that we counted.
9.	Vicky: Another problem that we had was we were wondering if what moths were attracted to. Were they attracted to the air compressors? We couldn't really figure that out because there's not really any way to test it.
10.	PL: We should have gone out there last night during the power failure and saw if all of them had flown off. Of course, that power failure occurred at three in the morning so that wasn't practical. So what, how did you guys spend your time today; explain this business of what are all these plastic bags here for. What all have you been doing?
11.	Vicky: OK, before there's were lots of moths there so we cleared them off. So we came out that night, I think it was around 7:05 and there were a certain amount of moths. So we were wondering if we came back about half an hour later and there were 28 moths. (Hal speaking softly at the same time.)
12.	Hal: Twenty five.
13.	Vicky: Yeah.
14.	PL: This is already after you 'd cleared the 239?
15.	Vicky: Yeah.
16.	Hal: So 25 more moths had come during the time.
17.	Vicky: And in another half hour there were even more moths.
18.	Hal: Twenty three.
19.	Vicky: Twenty three moths. So today we came out and there were more moths than that. 
20.	Hal: AT 7:20 this morning, we counted 40 moths. At 7:30 we counted 51 moths. 
21.	Vicky: Last night.
22.	Hal: No, we said that this morning. At 8:55 we counted 55 moths. And our last count, our most recent count was at 9:30 and we counted 56 moths.
23.	PL: And why are they all in bags like this?
24.	Vicky: Today what we did is we took, we sorted all of them, moths into their kinds. Like here's one you can see. Some of them there was five of a kind. This one has a whole (?) of its kind. Can't show you (mumble).
25.	PL: Which one had the most? I mean.
26.	Vicky: This guy had the most.
27.	PL: How many are there in there?
28.	Vicky: Five, I think, four or five.
29.	PL: Five out of 56?
30.	Vicky: Yeah, and uh, so we took all 5 of them in the same bag because they're the same kind. We sorted all of them in kinds and this is one of the kinds.
31.	PL: Can you hold that up for the camera?
32.	Vicky: It was our largest and we both think maybe our most spectacular. We named him "Shapeful" because he has a triangle right here, a circle here, and a triangle and a circle on his other wing.
33.	PL: OK, so if you had more time to investigate, what other kinds of things would you like to look at if we were to come back up here--with moths.
34.	Vicky: We would like to go out in the forest at night, would there be as much moths, would we find as much moths?
35.	PL: What do you mean, would you like to test the theory of light, for example?
36.	Vicky: Yeah, maybe we'd like to test the theory of light.
37.	PL: How would you do that?
38.	Vicky: We would set up a lantern.
39.	PL: A light tent or something like that.
40.	Vicky: Or we might want to test the sound because the air compressor makes so much humming we all complained (?).
41.	PL: So we could maybe try to imitate that.
42.	Vicky: Yeah, we could record that sound. 
43.	PL: Record that sound and take it out into the rainforest and put up another collection cloth and see it they'd come to that. That sure is interesting because I've never seen this many moths anywhere and certainly not this kind of variety. They're really beautiful.

The titles.

	Education is full of paradox and contrivance. My own inculcation as a science teacher working in schools has me valuing inquiry and claiming that listening closely to students is the strategy for developing meaningful teaching. However, the puzzles that arise from contradictions, from expectations challenged by a new point of view, and from new observations pointed out by someone else fascinate me. I wonder at the inherent contradictions built into teaching: Admonitions to honor and preserve the old stories while provoking and nurturing the new ones. I try to see if the poles of inquiry and apprenticeship as best practices will map onto innovation and conservation or disturbance and sustainability. Can the pedagogy of place provide the ground for a three-way symbiosis among normal science, revolutionary science, and traditional knowledge? Can the contrivances of school emerge from the unnatural and deceitful side of the (semantic) paradox through improvisation, inventiveness, and usefulness?
	
	 The epigraph used at the beginning of this piece is taken from Nabhan’s essay about how we develop knowledge of the natural world. He explains his wish further in the following excerpt:

	The reason that I want everyone to become field naturalists has nothing to do with financial or professional rewards—or, for that matter, with the hope of advancing science. To the contrary, ecology seems to be the field in which I am most likely to fail to prove any scientific hypothesis I attempt to test. And that’s why I like it: I am constantly reminded how wrong I can be about how the world works. 
	That’s half the problem: most of us need to be humbled more often, to be reminded that nature is not only more complex than we think, it’s more complex than we can think. (1997, pp. 97-87)

	My wife and I, in an extended, reflective, and wandering pilgrimage that winds through learning, teaching, family, and place, have toyed with the idea that Irony is a great organizing principle in the universe. Everything from the tragic to the joyous seems to make some sense when the irony is articulated. Unintended consequences of actions become obvious from the perspective of irony. Irony becomes a great explanatory principle and ironies seem to appear at every turn, at every level of analysis. The question then circles to whether any insight can emerge from such a wide-ranging principle. Will the insight sustain or will it descend more deeply into paradox as just another contrivance?

	This paper is directed toward the puzzle of helping displaced young adolescents develop a sense of place in school science while they live in a foreign land as third culture kids or global nomads. The set in which this paper appears proposes a promising connection, through the pedagogy of place, between cultural and ecological sustainability and science education. The students who appear in this paper are made manifest through polyvalent artifacts, narratives, metaphors, and other contrivances that span a decade. The students’ own lives resonate metaphorically, historically, and literally. Singapore was and is an entrepot for the products of the region. Parameswara, the founder of Malacca was displaced from a Hindu Singapura. (Malacca is the older English spelling; Melaka is the standard spelling in modern Bahasa Melayu, or the Malay language.) Malacca became great and was thought to be the Golden Chersonesus by the Portuguese, who conquered it in 1511. Then the Dutch came and finally the English who turned their attention from Malacca to Penang and Singapore. The Malay Sultans who had been displaced from Malacca reestablished themselves in Johor, Pulau Penyengat, and Pulau Lingga in the Riau Archipelago. In Malacca, Singapore, and Penang communities developed as a result of the contact and exchange between various groups. The Malacca Chitty are Bahasa Melayu-speaking Hindus born in Malaysia. Their ancestors had come from India as traders as long ago as the time of the great Hindu kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The Eurasian-Portuguese, Cristao, or Cristang are descendants of the Portuguese who first came to the Malay Archipelago in the 1500’s. There is a small community in Malacca today. Some still speak an archaic form of Portuguese. The Peranakans or Baba-Nonyas are descendants of the first Chinese who came to the Malay Archipelago in search of products from the seas, the forests, and the earth. The Peranakan Association of Singapore gives this brief history:

The Babas are descendants of an early Chinese community that settled in the Malay archipelago at least since the 17th century. Many members of the early community were seafarers who traded between the ports of southern China and those of Southeast Asia. The oldest Chinese communities can be found in Malacca. As Chinese women were by law not allowed to leave their native country until the middle of the 19th century, many of these early traders married non-Muslim natives of the Malay archipelago, such as Balinese or Batak slaves.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the Babas were involved in opium, sireh, nutmeg and liquor farming, pepper and gambier cultivation, tin mining, commodity trading and property. In the early 20th century, many Babas invested in rubber. They also worked as compradores (Chinese middlemen) for big Western companies and banks. As a Chinese community that always considered Malaya home, many Peranakans were involved in civic projects and local government, and numbered among the key players in Malaysia and Singapore's road to independence. Many Nyonyas also led the way in female emancipation. 
In the 21st century, the Babas face the same dilemmas and problems as other Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia--the decline of traditions, the inability to speak the dialect, the growing number of mixed marriages. All these factors lead to the great changes in the culture and uncertainty about the future. However the growth in Baba cultural activities as well as in memberships of Baba organisations indicate a growing awareness of the community's heritage and the importance of seeing it into the future. (The Peranakan Association of Singapore, 2000-2003, < http://www.peranakan.org.sg/roots02.html >)

	The students who appear in this paper are part of a long tradition of people engaged in contact and exchange. Their parents may work for companies devoted to the extraction, export, and exploitation of resources from the region. Their families may be bi-cultural, bi-lingual, bi-religious. Not only do the lives of the students resonate with the history of the place, but they are also connected to the lives of exotic plants that have been introduced through economy and accident. I try to provoke the students to imagine that humans have been domesticated by plants in a variety of horticultural and agricultural symbioses. Helping students develop a sense of place through the exploration of contact and exchange in history may help them make sense of their experiences and origins but may not come close at all to the promotion of cultural and ecological sustainability. The historical and botanical examples of contact and exchange we might find in the places around us in Singapore and the region display the consequences of contact and exploitation, disturbance, hybridization, and extinction as much as renewal and harmonious stability. 

The methods.

Because the pedagogy of place invites particularity, no contrived objectivity has been invoked here. But the autobiographical fragments, the contrivances of claiming perspective and of offering students’ actual words, and the questions raised in the name of reflection and insight may present an ambivalence that is cautious, skeptical, effete, and self-absorbed. I cannot separate myself from my own memories of the experience of place. While reviewing and transcribing video-tapes of my students in action, I heard in the background a Black-naped oriole gurgling in the canopy of the school forest. My heart ached. It was as if I had remembered a close, but momentarily forgotten friend who is far away. I am confused, too, at the postures advocated in educational research toward students and what they say and do. How can we talk about particularity and then blur results behind the contrivances of objectivity and anonymity? 
My method involves the selection of three episodes that embrace places significant to the teaching of seventh grade science to expatriate children in Singapore during my tenure there for eleven years. The sequence is semi-chronological and is based on some general practices and some specific projects. The chronology may jump scales where a particular project spans a larger chunk of time. I do not try to hide my teacher’s voice; nor do I appropriate another voice that seeks to dispense newly discovered general truth. (Or do I?) Each episode is built from students’ words taken from their writing and talking or from documents put forth in the name of students. In many cases, I would like for these words to speak for themselves. Where I have noticed paradox, contrivance, irony, and insight, I offer tentative analysis and interpretation. My questions remain as I wonder about the role that a sense of place plays now in the lives of my students.
This method does involve a selfish motive, and that is the desire to understand my own sense of place in the midst of diverse experiences learning, teaching, journeying, and staying.    

The episodes and artifacts.

1) Ulu Pandan. Neighborhood and ecology garden.

	The names of plants contribute significantly to the lexicon of place names in the Malay-speaking world. In addition there are two cognitive categories of space, hilir and ulu, that are based on the topology of a watershed. Hilir is downstream near an estuary and is the site of power and political structure. Ulu is upstream, the bush, the site of the farm and forest. Ulu Pandan is a place name that combines both features of Bahasa Melayu. Pandan refers to the group of plants that ranges from the screwpine that can be found on coasts throughout the tropical Pacific to the culinary pandanus that is used in several cuisines in Southeast Asia (Tham, 1990). 
The first episode features an unfolding place-based pedagogy situated in the schoolyard and neighborhood of the Ulu Pandan campus of the Singapore American School. In the mid 1980’s a middle school science curriculum developed at the University of Hawaii was adopted by SAS. Many refer to the program by the acronym FAST for Foundational Approaches to Science Teaching. The first book is entitled The Local Environment and is often called FAST 1(Pottenger and Young, 1978, 1992). FAST 1 calls for a piece of the schoolyard or neighborhood to be designated as a “Class study area” and various activities in the program target the area throughout the year. 
We took the directive to heart and spent much time visiting interesting spots in the schoolyard and neighborhood, watching birds, fish, lizards, insects, finding plants, collecting stem cuttings, fruits, seeds, and leaves, and mapping routes and locations. 
One area we often visited was a wooded green space south of the Sungei Ulu Pandan and north of Commonwealth Avenue West. It was triangular and perhaps two hundred meters wide at the base and a thousand or so meters long. It was quite an interesting place with some very large specimens of Hevea brasiliensis. Some of these specimens were as large as trees in the Botanic Gardens that are purported to be the first generation progeny of the first rubber trees introduced into Singapore. There were also patches of tapioca growing wild as well as various fruit trees. At first we thought it was abandoned secondary forest, and once we found the much-decomposed remains of a tree stump nearly one meter in diameter. The more we looked and observed, we realized that the area was like a forest garden and that residents of the high density housing nearby visited the area often to collect products. We found trails to productive fruit trees, remnants of harvested tapioca roots and bamboo poles, and we once talked with a man who said he was fishing for eels in a short section of a free-flowing, but stagnant stream. The following is an excerpt from a student’s poem written as a kind of map in lyrics of a class trip:

Jungle Trip Poem by K.L.

We crossed over the river, by way of a bridge,
	Then we hiked up and onto a small ledge.
We walked along, parallel to the stream,
	Someone saw a dead bird and almost screamed.
After a bit we turned onto a trail,
	The path was so small it could hardly fit a snail.
Ten meters down we got into the jungle,
	It felt like we were going into a tunnel.
All of a sudden, the sun just went out
	It got darker, muggier, and hotter enroute.

Looking around you’ll see many a tree.
	Or maybe a flower buzzing with bees.
A puddle or two, here and there,
	Some people slipped, it’s really unfair.
Around many trees you might see a vine
	Round the bend, you’re in sunshine.
Above the trees you’ll hear a bird call,
	If you look really hard, you might see him up tall.
We rounded a bend and into the sun,
	A large bed of ferns to grow had just begun.
Wow, up ahead, a durian tree,
	Personally, though, durian just isn’t for me.

The following is an excerpt from a group journal on another trip in another year to the same area. The journal is illustrated with photographs taken by the student-authors.

After we went down the hill and we walked a little and came to a stop. The navigator told us that we were entering the forest. As we went in the forest, I took many pictures. The first picture is the boomerang plant.
(3 photos)
In this next picture, J. is pointing and standing by a fig tree. The next picture is a bamboo tree as we were walking there were a lot of bamboo on the floor.
(2 photos)
The next picture is a canope tree. It blocks the sunlight. Here is a picture of how the canope tree blocks the sunlight. Under the canope tree are shade-loving plants and under the shade-loving plants are baby rubber trees.
(3 photos)
This picture is of a fish flap. It is called the fish flap because the leaves look like fish flippers.
Then we walked and walked. Then we came to a tree that all Singaporeans love. The durian tree. After the durian tree we walked and saw a fig tree. After that we started to walk back to school. I am the botanist, A. is the navigator, Z. is the pacer, and V. is the zoologist.
(3 photos)
Conclusion.
All though the field trip was very tiring, we enjoyed it and learned a lot. We all think the animals are safe there because they pretty much have a proper forest as their habitat. We just hope they don’t cut down the trees so the animals can live how they wish. 
Here are a few questions we are wondering about:
1) Did humans build the forest, or is it natural?
2) Are the animals there brought in from different countries?

The field trip was very interesting and we hope to go again. NOT (Just Kidding!) 

	It is interesting to note some common elements in both accounts. Both suggest some discomfort intermingled with interest. Both identify only a few plants to a level of any specificity. Keeping track of the route was part of the assignment connected with the trek, and both pieces relate events and specimens in sequence. Both also add comments to their notation of the durian. We might speculate here on how such a dramatic and salient fruit provides a strong focal point for locals and expatriates and suggests a portal for the emerging sense of place. Interesting, too, is the complex set of plant and animal relations that surrounds the durian. The flowers are pollinated by bats who also visit other important trees of the region. Local, urban durian lovers may not realize how important wild habitat is for the pollinators who bring the objects of their desire to fruit. Some children may find aspects of the pedagogy of place objectionable. So while the durian has already attained some prominence in this paper, it may not have engendered a positive connection to the forest for my third culture students. This is significant in that the foreigner may experience the durian initially as an icon of alien and forbidding nature as well as alien and incomprehensible culture. 
	The section of the Sungei Ulu Pandan near the school was contained within its channel with concrete embankments and bottom. The little urban river ran westward eventually emptying into the remnant of a mangrove estuary where the area had been reworked to form a reservoir. We visited the small concrete stream several times. One year all seventh grade science classes conducted a study. An excerpt from a student’s report follows:

On March 1st and March 15th, all the seventh grade science classes visited the stream. During their science class. On both visits each period counted the fish, caught and drew the fish, and collected physical data, such as the width and depth of the steam, the temperature of the stream, the speed of the stream, and the weather of the atmosphere. The way we would count the fish was rough, but consistent. We had seven stations along the stream, each station was five meters apart. There were three kids at each station. Two of the kids would count fish, and the third one would record the information that the other two kids would collect. . . . After the fish counts, we had to catch all the interesting things we could find and then draw pictures of them. We found tadpoles, guppies, and tilapia. . . . When I observed the behavior of the guppies in the stream, I found that they swam around slowly by themselves and would not swim away unless you were nearly touching it. In the tank the guppies behaved as if they were normal pet fish and did not mind when you looked at them. The tilapias swam in schools of about 10 to 15 fish in the stream. The were almost impossible to catch, because they swam very fast and would race away as soon as the catching net touched the water. In the tank the tilapias were much less nervous than in the stream. They swam around alone and behaved just as the guppies in the tank. 

	In another year several classes visited a second stream above the confluence with Sungei Ulu Pandan. The second stream drained a wooded area north of Ulu Pandan Road. The stream had a natural bank in the wooded area. When it crossed under the road, vertical walls of concrete formed the sides. The bottom was covered with soft mud and sand eroded from upstream. I had noticed a series of depressions formed in the substrate at the bottom of the stream. These depressions were bowl-like with a diameter of twenty to thirty centimeters. There were fifty or so of the structures giving the bottom a noticeably patterned appearance. When we visited the area, I asked my students to see if they could figure out what had produced the pattern. Classes observed for two days and then developed theories. They had noticed some unusual behaviors in fish that seemed to be associated with the area. Nine distinct theories were offered. Three of the nine theories follow:

Theory D
The depression is formed when a black fish sucks up sand from the center of the pit and spits it out at the rim. Color changes when a black fish becomes threatened. When the fish regains confidence, it changes back to black. The black fish is the male. It has a hooked jaw and a red tail. The jaw is also yellow. The female is white with gray speckles on it. The jaw of the female is not hooked. The purpose of the depression is to provide a mating ground for the fish. When a danger, other than another fish, appears, the fish turn white and school. The fish guard the depressions from other black fish because eggs are being guarded. The black fish chases the white fish to prove his worthiness. The black fish swimming parallel is also a show of worthiness. When a black fish meets another black fish, they will swim at each other with hostility.

Theory E
The fish pick up sand in the middle of the depressions and spit it on the side. When the white fish change color, they are telling black’s they don’t want to breed. The black fish are female and the white fish are male. The little fish travel in schools so they can work together. The fish sit in the depressions because they are guarding their eggs. Blacks are chasing the whites because the whites (males) want to eat the eggs. The whites and blacks swim parallel because this is the way they decide whether or not to mate. When the black interact with each other, they are fighting for territory. The depressions are used for egg laying.

Theory H
The fish in the depressions are digging for worms. If another fish comes near, it will swim parallel or circle the approaching fish blocking it from its feeding ground. When a black fish approaches another of its type, it will decide if it can beat it in a fight, and if it decides that it can’t, it will swim away. The incoming black fish will then enter the depression and start digging for worms, which forms the depression. The male is slightly larger, but both sexes can change color. Schools of fish normally always swim in a triangular formation eating food on the way.

	The stream studies hold several ironies. According to local lore the guppies were introduced to control mosquitoes. The tilapia escaped from fish farming operations initiated by the Japanese during their occupation. The tilapia are widespread in the urban waterways of Singapore. The effort to learn about the place where we found ourselves involved an object of study that was aggravating the loss of aquatic biodiversity in Singapore by out-competing native species. The introduction had been aimed at a kind of sustainability through fish culture. The tilapia can tolerate extreme physical conditions and manage to reproduce even while they are very young. As a science teacher I was excited with the students’ observations of the stream and the fish. At first I did not believe it when students said they saw the fish changing colors. I finally watched a black fish turn light and then join a school of white fish. I was delighted to find the puzzle and marveled at the diverse theories developed by the students. Left at this stage, however, the theories represent an educational paradox. How can the students develop a deep sense of place that involves the creatures of the place when equally intense observations and interpretations produce contradictory explanations? As an aspiring place educator I contacted a fish specialist at the Zoological Reference Collection at the National University of Singapore. (The ZRC is one of the most important collections of animal specimens from Southeast Asia in the world). My expert contact was slightly interested in the observations and theories, but could only speculate, since he had concentrated on what he thought were more intriguing rare native species from the forest streams and swamps. 
	I once set up an aquarium (with fish my seventh grade students were studying) for a display as part of a public education effort conducted by the Nature Society of Singapore. A well-known naturalist (photographer, author, filmmaker) commented negatively on the inclusion of the tilapia at an event for the celebration of nature in Singapore. He maintained that the tilapia were analogous to the most noxious of weeds. 

	The class study area on the schoolyard began as a fenced section of mown grass. There were a large Angsana tree (Pterocarpus indicus), a Mango (Mangifera indica), and a Rose of India (Lagerstroemia speciosa). During an early effort to perform some of the surveys prescribed in the FAST 1 program, my students happened upon an original question tied to the history of the place. A student’s report described the observations and thinking:

	Last quarter, our class did several soil tests in our outdoor lab. One of our results was very peculiar. We found that a certain area of our outdoor lab was one third more compact than the rest of the land. As you can see, there is a major dip between the areas of B and E.

(A graphical representation of the data is displayed. The results were based on the depth a flathead screwdriver would sink when dropped vertically from a height of one meter.)

While discussing it in class, Billy realized that there used to be a playground on the more compact area. We began to wonder if the running and stomping of little kids in the playground had an effect on the soil’s compaction. This discussion led us to our experimental question:  Does the running and stomping of little kids change the compaction of an area?
I figured that since the playground had been there for years, with many kids running on it for several hours a day, and that the playground had only recently been taken down, that the running and stomping of the kids had almost certainly affected the compaction. I didn’t think, however, that there was any way for us to conduct an experiment that would change the compaction to a noticeable amount, because I figured that it probably took years for the kids to change the compaction.

	The class that developed the question did go on to perform a kind of historical simulation. They found a part of the campus where the lawn had not been walked on. They performed a series of compaction tests on the control and experimental areas, recruited kindergartners to administer a regime of play on the test area over several days, and then repeated the compaction tests on both areas. The results showed a noticeable effect on the test area.
	The paucity of interesting plants in the class study area resulted in a proposal to enhance the floral diversity and to establish the area as an ecology garden for the school. Plantings were made during several Earth Day celebrations by different classes and youth groups. Seventh graders dug a pond one year based on a student’s design. The Singapore Botanic Gardens donated some aquatic plants. Classrooms would empty aquariums in the pond at the end of the school year and fish caught from the local urban streams were added. The pond eventually settled into a balanced system of introduced and exotic species. Water had to be added only occasionally. Seventh graders also conducted studies of plant propagation using stem cuttings from tapioca gathered from patches near the school. On excursions in the neighborhood woodlands, students would collect seeds and plant them. By the time the school moved to the new campus, there were several rubber trees twenty-five feet tall, an African oil palm with a large crown that had begun to fruit prolifically.
	As the ecology garden became more diverse, the entire schoolyard was used for other studies. Plant lists were created for the whole area in order to compare areas of diversity. Bird surveys of the number of species, abundance, and distribution were performed annually. Data compared favorably to other surveys performed in the country by more expert observers. Bird behavior was also investigated in the schoolyard. Sixth graders used the area to survey the diversity and behavior of ants. Aggressive and alert weaver ants could always be found on the mango tree. 
	I became attached to the ecology garden. In preparing this paper, I happened upon a piece about the ecology garden published in a newsletter for parents in June, 1991. 
	
	The ecology garden is a small effort but represents an attempt to teach an essential, larger lesson. It is a lesson that is at the heart of what our children will face dramatically in the next century. The diversity of life on earth is overwhelming. At the same time, the earth seems to be going through a period where the rate of extinction is as great as that which occurred during the demise of the dinosaurs. Our good fortune of being in Singapore makes this point about incredible diversity immediate. There are more species of tree in the seventy-five hectares of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve than there are in all of Great Britain. A trip to a tropical rainforest, to a coral reef, or to a mangrove shore shows us another subtle but significant lesson, that it is hard to tell where one species ends and another begins. The classic schoolbook dichotomies of plant and animal are not so easy to maintain upon close examination of real cases. The lives of all living things are coupled, intricately woven together, dynamically interdependent. We, as humans, are a part of this tissue of life on earth, and yet, we have the incredible potential to change it. Do we understand our place in this web of connections? After all, the historical, political, and economic reasons many of us are in Singapore today could be traced back hundreds of years to the cravings developed in Europe for the products of certain tropical plants. Do we, either as individuals or as a species, have any inkling of the consequences of the changes brought about on earth by humans? We can either try to understand life on earth and our place in it or we can try to remain ignorant of it. But whatever we decide to try to understand, we cannot avoid the fact that we are biological creatures intricately linked to the happenings of the living world. For me, it is a fascinating and beautiful world. And I hope that our humble, low-budget ecology garden can provide just a little fascination, beauty, and understanding for our children.

	The ecology garden was certainly a contrivance as were the efforts to recruit seventh graders into the practice of science. There are ironies of scale, too, as my wish as a teacher for grand and global understandings on the part of children is based on small and ambiguous experiences with a nature born from disturbance and biological invasion. I find myself puzzled again at the juxtaposition of my interest and fascination with the diversity of thinking children expressed in their fish theories and the sermon-like solemnity in my admonishment that we can and should comprehend how all life is connected. I am reminded of the attractive humility highlighted by Nabhan.
	And then we found out that the school would relocate--a challenge to our science program that had been increasingly based on the resources of certain places on and near the school

2) Woodlands. The school forest.

	Once we found that the school was relocating to the northern part of the island, very near the causeway to Malaysia, we got involved in plans. I became a faculty member of the design committee, and the entire seventh grade spent several days conducting a variety of surveys on the site. The students produced a substantial report. The report was a kind of base-line history with some of the features of an environmental and social impact study. Some excerpts from various documents are presented in the next section.

	A proposal sent to the architects (from Chicago!) follows:

To: Architects / Landscape Architects
20 September, 1993
Planting Ideas for the New School Campus

Keep as much original vegetation as possible, especially in large area as a unit.  

At present on the site there are some valuable, mature trees--breadfruit, durian, other trees. The area should be surveyed before any clearing--to assess botanical wealth.  There's no point in squandering a resource only to try to buy it back later.  We have a unique opportunity to have as a part of the campus a piece of the rich heritage of Southeast Asia.  In a sense, the entire region owes its current economic importance to the wealth of forest products that formed the basis of trade over five hundred years ago.  Columbus intended to reach this part of the world when he set sail. The Portuguese along with the Dutch and English (Spanish in the Philippines; French in Indochina) carved up the region and set boundaries and institutions which still impact today's world.  Their collective desire as colonial powers focused on the botanical riches of the region. Southeast Asian rainforests were also instrumental in inspiring Alfred Russel Wallace's formulation of the theory of natural selection which was published contemporaneously with Darwin's. The plants of the region are key players in the economic, political and scientific histories that have affected the whole world.  Keeping a section of forest (even where its origin is abandoned plantation and kampong, like our site) is entirely appropriate for a school. It would be the greatest pity to waste what is now there.  The value as a resource is immense--from the academic to the aesthetic--from science to social studies--even to art and literature.  In the future, our city will need every bit of green space it can protect.  Our school can participate in the plan for an urban environment which is in harmony with nature.  Keeping a patch of forest on the school ground with its accompanying biodiversity is having an incredibly rich biological library and storehouse for no cost at all.  If the educational value were calculated against the monetary cost, the forest would be the best deal economically of any part of the school plan.  Such a deal should impress even the most hard line of the bottom line developers!

For new plantings, consider:

•	Economically important plants of the region (and the tropics).
•	Indigenous plants (Malay place name plants, for example).
•	Plants important in the history and culture (including religions) of the region.
•	Plants that are attractive to birds and other animals.
•	Plants that exhibit particular or unusual structures, behavior, reproduction, etc.
•	Plant that typify important taxonomic groups.
•	Important culinary and medicinal plants.

Species that fall into these categories can be suggested by the Botanic Gardens and National Parks Board scientific staff, the Botany Department of the National University, and various members of the Nature Society--some of whom are experts in urban planning and nature conservation.

Plant areas should also be planned for maximum diversity and complexity.  A rich botanic environment is more important in a school setting than a cleanly manicured lawn full of monotonous ornamentals.  It is OK; it is good to have rough, long grass areas with a rich mix of species.  It is good to have scrub areas with pioneer species typical of the forest edges. It is important for children (especially in an urban setting) to be able to see the dynamic success of ecosystems.  Children will need a place in a 21st century school with even a tiny bit of wilderness.  There will be plenty of golf courses and manicured parks and high tech buildings.  It is both appropriate and responsible for a school to preserve and protect a bit of nature!

	The seventh grade was divided into specialty classes for various surveys. Two classes visited the neighborhood where the school was to be built and conducted a kind of sociological study. Another set of classes conducted surveys of plants and animals. Two other classes worked as archaeologists and tried to discern the way the land had been used by humans in the recent past.
	A section from one plant report follows:

The site had lots of construction area on the way to the forest area.  It had a very thick, dense canopy.  The dense canopy blocked off most of the sun light, causing most of the heat to stay above the trees.  The forest area contained lots of ferns, jackfruit, durians and one simple toilet by the lower end of the area.  The area was small and contained lost of bugs, mostly mosquitoes.  The grown was very muddy and had about no grass. It had lots of weeds and flowers on low plants.  The land, believed by Mr. F., once was a jackfruit and durian plantation.  The site would soon be covered in quadrats made by us explained in the procedure.  To get to the plant and quadrat area we had to climb a steep, muddy, slippery hill.

	The botany surveys found twenty six species in the sample areas.  Techniques involved developing a species-area curve and a transect down the slope combined with quadrats. Interestingly, after the school had been built and the size of the wooded area greatly reduced, efforts to catalog species richness produced more than 100 species of plant.

	Some comments follow from one of the initial plant survey groups. It is interesting to note that one of the student authors calls the area a wilderness while many of the other comments focus on aspects of the trip that may have been more salient than plant watching:.

	Our seventh grade class took a trek through the wilderness to W. where our new school will be built.  We had many strange experiences. Students from our class had many ideas, quotes, and feelings about the nature and the trip to W.  Here are all of our quotes, stories, and feelings about our trip . . . 

"Fun!"
"I loved sliding down the hill and the bus rides."
"There was too much rain on the first day, but sliding down the hill was cool."
"I thought the spiders were nasty and I thought I was going to faint. Then I saw a scorpion and though my life was over.  The spiders were the worst though!"
"It's better than being in science class. Nonetheless, the trip was worth it.  The third day was the best because I saw a scorpion."
"There were lots of mosquitoes! I hated the mosquitoes, hill, mud, water, everything in general except for my quadrat."
"I liked the hill and I learned a lot about a bunch of different plants!" 
"I really liked climbing up and down the slippery hill and seeing the cool spiders.  I liked it when it rained on the first day.  I also enjoyed the bus rides!"

The following summary was written by the class doing an animal survey:

	In the end we saw/heard 21 species of birds and 12 different species of insects.  All together the class did a very good job on taking an animal survey.  The most common bird that we saw at the W. area was the Common Myna.  The Common Myna has an orange beak and a black body with a touch of white underneath the tail feathers.  We also found a very unique looking spider which we preserved and that is now in a glass jar.  Everyone participated and also had a great time.  In a chance to go back to woodlands, almost all of us would because we would want to see the different types of birds and animals that we did not see the first time.
	We saw different types of birds at the W. area. One of the types that we saw was a woodpecker.  We recognized it by the obnoxious noise that is was making, pecking against the tree.  Mr. F. told us that if we got really good at bird watching, we would be able to identify the different kinds of woodpeckers. Even though we were not able to, the class still felt that they had learned a lot from the experience.  Overall, the fourth period science class feel that we learned a lot from birdwatching.

	The animal study group commented how the area might serve as a school forest or class study area:

	On our trip to W. we noticed what the conditions of the fields were and we decided to take a survey of what everyone else thought should happen to Woodlands.  We asked people in our fourth period science class about what they should do about the forest at W. and many of them said that they should build the school and leave at least 5000 square meters of forest up for observing animals and plants.
	Our science teacher, Mr. F., agrees with that idea. We interviewed a total of 21 students from fourth period and 10 said to leave some forested area up.  Five people said not to build a school and leave it up just as it is for observing insects and animals and take field trips up to the area. Three people said to knock it all down and three other people said to clear a path and leave about 8000 square meters of untouched forest. Of course, there would be a door to enter the area.  Both of us personally feel that they should leave up most of the forest and make the school smaller.

	The groups conducting the sociological surveys visited food centers as well as cultural and religious institutions. An excerpt on food follows:

We went to Woodlands this past week. I enjoyed getting to observe the people who were there. There were Chinese, Malays, and Indians. I had to find out about food so I surveyed them and the majority of the Chinese, Malays, and Indians said they ate more rice than anything else. I watched some people at the hawker stalls. They were eating many different kinds of foods but most of them also had rice on their plate. Rice is a staple to the people’s diet for most nationalities in Singapore.
When I got the job to observe, I went to the hawker stalls. I asked people what kind of food was served and how much it cost. It was cheaper than most hawker stalls because it is in a less developed area. It was created by the locals, and that is where the locals go to eat. The Chinese eat lost of different foods. They eat rice, noodles, spring rolls, chicken, and spinach. I have had all those things, and I think they are all very good.
The Malay people eat lots of different foods as well. They eat satay, Laksa, Nasi Goreng, and rice. I have only eaten satay, but locals I talked to ate quite of bit of everything listed above.
The people from India eat roti prata, paper dosa, all different kinds of curry, and rice. I don’t like Indian food at all, but there are so many things a lot of us just haven’t tried.
I enjoyed this trip, and hopefully we can take another one again soon.

	Once the school was built, seventh grade science began to use the area extensively. A few neighborhood treks were taken, especially to a wooded strip of land separating the school from an expressway. A water pipeline from Malaysia ran through the strip. The strip of land featured fruit trees and stands of tapioca as well as other plants of interest, like carnivorous pitcher plants (Nepenthes sp.). The most intensive studies were conducted in the school forest.
	Four short interviews follow where seventh graders are in the midst of firsthand research on a project that focused on the school forest. In the first, two boys squat by a tree seedling.  In the preceding year we had tried to enhance the botanical diversity with rainforest tree seedlings collected from local forest reserves by Dr. Shawn Lum (1997). Other specimens of agriculturally important trees had been obtained from a small farm we had visited in Malaysia. That trip will be described in the next episode. In the interview Ralph and Eric are working on a database and map of the plantings in the school forest. 

1.	Ralph: OK. How many branches do we have?
2.	(Both count by touching)
3.	Ralph (continues): One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine. OK, we've got nine branches.
4.	(Eric records the number; Eric begins counting leaves silently).
5.	RF:  Can you guys tell us a little bit about your project, what you've been doing and what you've been learning?
6.	Ralph:  Well, basically what we've been doing is we've been going over all the plants, seedlings, rainforest trees, and we've been recording height, the diameter around the base, the number of leaves, the number of stems, the scientific name, the common name, what family they're in like palm family, or like whatever flower family, whatever you want. And we're going to plot it on the map, and we have what Dr. F made here from a few years ago and we're going to combine these with the new trees.
7.	Eric: We've been making our table like this. (Holds up for the camera).  It shows our diameter, height, family name, scientific name, common name. And we're making a rough draft of another which has the name, number, the leaves, and the stems and we're just showing, we're just making a little record of all these trees that Dr. F. got planted.
8.	Ralph: And we're having pictures, and I'm going tonight to talk to the guy who gave us the seedlings so I can hopefully get a lot of the plant dates like when they were planted, so I can find out how old they are, so we can record the progress of how they've been growing.
9.	RF:  How many specimens are in your study?
10.	Ralph: I'd say about 40 or 50 maybe.
11.	Eric: A lot.
12.	RF: What's this one we've got right here?
13.	Eric: It's a Damar. (Dryobalanops aromatica? Hopea sp.?other dipterocarp?)
14.	Ralph: This one's been recently--got knocked over.
15.	Eric: And we taped it back together. Someone was carelessly running through and stepped on it so we tried to tape it, and it looks like it's doing pretty good.
16.	Ralph: It's not brown.
17.	Eric: And it survived.
18.	Ralph: We've only found one mistake so far; we fixed that up there.
19.	RF: What kinds of thing do you feel like you've you been learning? 
20.	Ralph: Been learning a lot what plants look like like the Damar and the Shorea are pretty much the same. But one of them was marked up there as the Intsia, but we figured it was the Damar by the leaf shape and the way the branches branched off.   
21.	Eric:  So we have to observe them very, very carefully because some of them could be mistakes. Because these leaves are really close to an Intsia and it's really easy to mistake other trees.
22.	Ralph: We've got a range of things like from Mango, to Capostasia (Cecropia?),  Coffee, Shorea roxburghi, and Betel Nut Palm, and like this Damar, so we've got quite a range of things, I could keep going, but.
23.	RF: Thanks guys.   

Ralph and Eric notice distinctions between very similar species. Ralph says that the "Damar and the Shorea are pretty much the same.” Both are Dipterocarps, a predominant family of trees in Southeast Asian rainforests. Ralph and Eric may exemplify students who are on their way to fulfilling Nabhan’s wish in the accurate ease with which they discuss the trees in their project.
	The next interview features four students who describe a project on food and other culinary plants that can be found in the school forest. The plant called a curryleaf in the interview is probably a wild native Clausena species rather than the frequently cultivated Murraya. When crushed, the leaves of both plants yield a pungent odor. The comments on the durian were made nearly ten years after similar comments made by expatriate children cited earlier in this paper.
 
1.	RF: Here's  Aisha, Minna, Jake, and---our new student--Sarah, who's been introduced to the forest right after she came. Jake, would you tell us a little bit about what your project is?
2.	Jake:  Our project will be to see how many edible plants there are in the school forest. We're going to make a recipe book. We'll take pictures of them and find recipes with all the different ingredients (waves hand around toward the surrounding vegetation).
3.	RF: What are some of the plants that you've found?
4.	Minna: We've found breadfruit, avocado, durian, papaya, tapioca, chili, coffee, banana, palm oil, lemon grass, sweet potato, limes, mangoes and a lot more.
5.	RF: Have you found some recipes?
6.	Aisha: Yeah, we found this one book that shows us recipes to like make with different kinds of herbs, and we have another book that shows you how to make recipes with fruits.
7.	RF:  Out of the list of plants that you have, how many have you had before, have you eaten before yourself?
8.	Aisha: Most of them.
9.	Minna: Almost all of them.
10.	Jake: I never tasted chiku.
11.	Aisha: I have.
12.	Minna: I've never tasted cempadek, or durian, or starfruit (looking at records).
13.	Jake: I think a lot of people are scared of durian maybe.
14.	RF: Why are they scared of durian?
15.	All (at once): Because of the smell.
16.	Jake: Maybe if they don't know it and then taste it, they like it, but it scares them off with the smell.
17.	RF:  Have you eaten Durian before, Jake?
18.	Jake: Yeah.
19.	RF: You like it?
20.	Jake: No.
21.	RF:  So you guys want to see the curry leaf?
22.	All: Yes.
23.	RF: (after moving a few meters) OK, here's the curry leaf. 
24.	Aisha: Where?
25.	RF: There.
26.	Aisha: Which one?
27.	RF: Yeah. Take a little bit and smell it, and tell me what it smells like to you.
28.	Jake: I can't smell anything.
29.	RF: Crush it.
30.	Aisha: Oh, my gosh!
31.	Jake: Cool!
32.	Aisha: That smells like a herb or something.
33.	(Jake, grinning proudly, eats a leaf.)

The students add the curryleaf to their list. They seem to be driven to make the longest list possible. The group is both fascinated and repelled by some of the extreme tastes. The students speak the initially strange names of the plants with growing fluency and connect the names with particular specimens with great familiarity. It might be tempting to imagine that Jake, Aisha, Minna, and Sarah, like Ralph and Eric, are reaching the place where they are on a first name basis with plants of some importance (to a particular place).  
Sally and Regina decided to study spiders and webs.  While most students selected to study particular species, S and R wanted to explore an ecological relationship. They wonder how web design might be related to the kind of spider. A typical irony is suggested in the discrepancy between the sophistication of their question and the actual implementation of their investigation. Other spider groups tried to develop species lists. They would catch and release spiders for close examination and explored areas farther from the path than Sally and Regina.   

1.	RF: We're here with Sally and Regina. Could you tell us a little bit about your project and what we're looking at here?
2.	Regina: We're seeing about spiders and their webs.
3.	Sally: And the question is: Do different species of spiders have different designs of webs?
4.	RF: OK, I'm shifting views, would you say that again?
5.	Sally: Our question is if different species of spider have different designs of webs.
6.	RF: And, what have you been finding out?
7.	Sally: OK, so far this is true.
8.	Regina:  And we've been looking at webs we find spiders on.
9.	RF: What are some of the different things you've seen?
10.	Sally:  Usually the bigger spiders have one flat web and the smaller spiders have (hand is making circles) a house web.
11.	Regina:  And we've seen like disks (hand makes a circle) for webs.
12.	RF: What is the biggest spider you've seen?
13.	Regina:  The Golden Orb.
14.	RF:  How big is it?
15.	Sally: (making a circle with her thumbs and forefingers of both hands) Counting the legs?
16.	RF: Yes.
17.	Sally: This big (indicating the circle she's made with her hands).
18.	RF: How many different kinds of spider are in your study?
19.	Sally: We're not sure yet.
20.	RF: Well, how many have you seen that you know are different?
21.	Sally:  Like a lot.
22.	RF: Like how many?
23.	Sally:  I don't know.
24.	RF: So what are you doing right now?
25.	Sally: Getting interviewed.
26.	RF: Getting what?
27.	Sally: Interviewed.
28.	RF: No, I mean as part of your--
29.	Regina: We're looking for other spider webs.
30.	RF: Did you see the one down by the gazebo?
31.	Both: Yeah.

	Sally and Regina's hesitant reference to the kinds of spider they have been watching makes it difficult to decide how far they can and will proceed in addressing their question. In analogy to the alien and unusual tastes of plants shown by other students, Sally and Regina may be both repulsed because of a fear of spiders and fascinated by the beautiful geometries of spider webs.
	In the fourth interview four boys have chosen to design a field trip to the school forest for fifth graders. This project has the potential to provide great insight by noticing how and what the boys select as worthy of interest. One member, called Seth, presents a story filled with educational irony. He had much difficulty in school, seldom turning in assigned work and engaging in behaviors that eventually resulted in his leaving the school. Seth was incredibly skilled at noticing, distinguishing, and remembering plants. His skill was without any basis in literacy, but he was better at plant identification (at his own taxonomic level) than most adults. I have always thought the he would have been a botanical shaman had he been born into a traditional society. 

1.	RF: We're here with Ben, Mike, Harry, and Seth and they're going to tell us a little about their forest project and take us through some of it.
2.	Ben:  We're doing a tour for 5th graders on the school forest and we're going to show them a bunch of neat little things up here like tapioca, spiders, jackfruit, trees that have been eaten alive, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and a lot of things you might eat someday. Well, here we go.
3.	Ben: (Group walks up into the forested area.) We start at the gazebo and feed them French fries made from tapioca root on these leaves right here.
4.	RF: Which is?
5.	Ben and Seth: These (touching leaf of Dillenia suffructicosa—once used as a food wrapper in Singapore).
6.	Ben: Ones that aren't eaten.
7.	RF:  Can you show us the tapioca?
8.	Ben: Tapioca--there is a bunch over there.
9.	RF: Where?
10.	(Seth, Mike and Harry move to point out plants.)
11.	Seth: This one (touching plant confidently.)
12.	Harry: Here's an aloe patch.
13.	Ben:  Here's a nice little patch of aloe.
14.	Seth: Somebody stepped on it.
15.	Harry: This one over here's healthier.
16.	(Group moves along walk further into forest.)
17.	Ben: We come up in two groups and we show them a bunch of (inaudible).
18.	(Group still walking.)
19.	RF: Guys, show me just one example of one thing that you'll do.
20.	Ben:  This is a fishtail palm (touching a leaf) and it looks like the tail of a fish and it's the most common one in this place.
21.	Seth: Yeah, it's the most common palm in this forest.
22.	Ben: We have a spider over here.
23.	(Group still walking.)
24.	Ben: This is a remnant of a spider web.
25.	Harry: This is where people aren't very nice to the forest--people.
26.	RF: Just. OK, let's stop here just a second and just tell me basically what your tour's going to be like. You're going to feed them French fries from tapioca and then what?
27.	Ben: We're going to show them the really big spiders in here and we're going to show them the tapioca. And we're going to go up to the circle at the top and we're going to show them the lemon grass and let them crush it up so they can smell it and stuff.  It's really cool. Show them the sweet potato, the chili plants and like the figs up there and see the jalapeno peppers.
28.	RF:  OK, if you could say that there's one kind of message or point from your tour--or the thing you'd like the 5th graders to get out of it, what would it be?
29.	Ben: Even though you have a school right here, there's still in Singapore a lot of biodiversity in a little forest like this.  There's a lot of plants you might never think would grow here. Things like tapioca and jackfruit, all these fruit plants, they probably think they're somewhere else but they actually grow right here in the school.
30.	Harry:  Some of these plants are from all different countries, such as the tapioca, it's not originally from Singapore.
31.	Seth: Although when you eat the root, you can live off of it. Not healthily.
32.	Ben: And then we're going to do a treasure hunt just for fun and give out prizes and stuff.
33.	RF:  What's the treasure hunt? They have to find something? 
34.	Ben: Yeah, there's different note cards and they have to find note cards about what they learned.

During the time seventh grade science explored the school forest on the new Woodlands campus, a host of projects were conducted. Many of these imitated the genres of standard science, (contrived) assignments typical of schoolwork, and other (sometimes innovative) forms like video documentaries, service projects, and websites. Options were offered to students to compose creative and reflective writings. Two examples follow. The first is a poem that shifts from a procedural account to reflect ironically on the practice of mapping nature. The poem is connected to an assigned effort for students to map accurately the location of the largest trees in the school forest. 

Mapping Nature

by S. B.

Difficult process, it is.
Pick a point, a fixed reference.
Paper there.
Tape measure stretched
Draw the angle
Use the distance
To plot.
Repeat, repeat,
Capture the spirit
Of the place with
Mechanical human ways.
Map nature, but can we?
We can't control nature, never
Properly map it.
It will grow and change,
Things'll die and sprout.
It's a wild area, unmappable.
But we have,
Sadly, we have.

The next piece is an excerpt from an essay entitled “The School Rainforest.” It is interesting that a seventh grader, a global nomad, finds intense beauty in a place and then turns toward admonition. The response of this twelve-year-old is not unlike the stories Jane Goodall tells about her own immersion in the forest at Gombe Stream. Her experience of particular animals in a particular place has evolved into an intense global campaign in recent years for conservation, education, and the humane treatment of primates. 

	I had no idea that the Singapore American School was once on a piece of land that had such a rich diversity of flora and fauna until we went to our school rainforest.  The reason for going during class may be for scientific and mapping purposes, but every time I go there, I still look at the trees and whatever wildlife there is to see, and I am almost a little kid with the determination to know and want everything again. . . .
	The many varieties of flora also intrigue me. I often gaze up in awe at the mighty giants towering over me and wonder what kind of wildlife lurks there during the night hours. Sometimes I do not wish to know. . . .
	. . . But this rainforest at school may help others in the future realize how wonderful of a place a forest like it is. If we, the citizens of the planet Earth, wish to continue to seek a cure for one of the many serious ailments that plague our existence soon, we must act now.  If we children, the next generation, are put into contact with nature at an early age, we will realize what an important place it is for not only our planet, but for our entire civilization.
	We should act now. Before it's too late.

	I just learned that a portion of the school forest was cleared in the name of security. On January 9, 2003, CNN reported the following:

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Terrorists belonging to a Southeast Asian Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah, targeted Singapore's American School for a possible attack that was foiled by a wave of arrests, Singapore's government said Thursday. 
Jemaah Islamiyah, an al Qaeda linked group which has been widely blamed for the October 12 bombings on Indonesia's Bali island, planned attacks on the American School in November and December 2001, the government said in a report on terrorism. 
The government has previously accused Jemaah Islamiyah of planning truck bomb attacks on the U.S., Australian and British embassies and other targets in the city-state, but this is the first time it has accused it of targeting the American School. 
The report said local Jemaah Islamiyah leaders instructed members to conduct reconnaissance of the school, which has close to 3,000 students, mostly children of American expatriates. "They were told to mark observation posts, monitor movement of U.S. security personnel and take photographs and photocopy maps," the report said.

	On January 24, 2003, I received an email message from a friend and colleague who had taken the seventh grade science position at the school when I left:

Now the bad news...in the "interest of security" there has been some cutting
along the fence line in the forest area and in the butterfly park. M. discovered it last Friday when she went up to embark on some AP Environmental Science quadrat studies.  We had not been up there since we ended our 7th grade survey in early November.  During that time all the
trees along the fence side have been cut down including the breadfruit tree which was maturing nicely and was at least 8 ft tall, the Indian (False) Cherry trees which had grown quite substantial and at least one African tulip tree seedling which was coming along very well.  It is now a
completely grassy area so it was done some time ago...I feel very badly that the sanctity of a memorial garden was violated.  Along the fence into the forest the very mature Dillenia and Fishtail which served as a wind break and light filter are gone. The Johannes(sp?)palms are cut way down to nothing-they were huge and majestic in November...

	The palms mentioned in the message are from the genus Johannesteijsmannia or Teysmannia and are known in Bahasa Melayu as daun payong or sal. The fronds are used as roofing in the forest huts built by the Orang Asli (general name for the ‘people of the place’ or forest people).
	The ironies run deep with the transition to the next place that features in the development of a sense of place for expatriate seventh graders in a strange land. Alphoso d’Albuquerque was the Portuguese admiral who conquered Malacca in 1511. Two of his many schemes are described by Howe (1947):

. . . The envoy then confided to him the contents—namely a suggestion for inter-marriage between the children of the two royal families, and an offer to send troops and provisions to assist the Portuguese to break down the power of the Sultan of Cairo, and to destroy the city of Mecca. All this fitted in beautifully with D’Alburquerque’s own schemes, who for some time had cherished the idea of making a quick march from Medina to Mecca, in order to snatch away the body of the Prophet, which he meant to offer in exchange for Jerusalem.
	Another of his designs was to divert the course of the Nile, in order to destroy the fertility of Egypt. . . .(pp. 159-160)

3) Malacca: Forest, farm, city.

	The year before seventh graders conducted the survey of the new school site at Woodlands, their predecessors took the first ever out-of-country field trip for the middle school. Some of the history of that first trip as well as various configurations of the contrivance are revealed in a proposal submitted to the school’s Board of Governors to include Gunung Ledang in the seventh grade trip to Malacca (14 May, 1998).

	In the spring of 1992 a group of seventh grade teachers sat in the narrow teachers’ room of the Sigma community at Ulu Pandan and excitedly discussed a question just posed by a colleague.  “Next year is the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landfall in the New World. What can we do to celebrate the event?” The question provoked a flurry of ideas and ambitious plans and ultimately gave rise to an important part of the middle school program at the Singapore American School.
	The brainstorm about Columbus led to the realization that we live in the very part of the world which was so greatly desired by the Admiral of the Seas. No more perfect site existed for an exploration of the dawn of the Ages of Exploration and Exploitation than Malacca. Thought to be the “Golden Chersonesus” of the Greeks, Malacca was a most important entrepot for the products of Asia. Both Columbus and his Portuguese competitors must have been greatly tempted by the belief that “whoever controlled Malacca had his hand on the throat of Venice:”
	A global cascade of earth-changing events followed Columbus’ voyages. The torrent rose even higher as Portugal and Spain carved up the globe and began a monumental exchange of plants and animals among the continents. Life on earth was forever transformed.
	Part of an ongoing mission of middle school (specifically seventh grade) is to help students begin to locate themselves in the world. Our strategic plan specifically mentions the value of interconnectedness and the objective of service to the community. The transition from child to adult is sometimes confusing and arduous and is always significant. The expatriate child faces the unique situation of being somewhat adrift just when trying to find his or her bearings.
	The middle school child needs to understand why they are here, in Singapore, and what roles they may take in the global community. Amazingly, one set of answers comes from tracing events back along the cascade of consequences in the Columbian Exchange. Eventually, we all come to the watershed marked by Columbus. He set said for spices, for the plant products of the tropical forests of Asia. We and our children and our students are here because of plants and because of the human exploitation of plants and plant products.
	The stories of nutmeg and clove, of resins and medicines, of tropical timbers and tannins, of rubber and palm oil are surprisingly numerous, dramatically intriguing, wildly convoluted, and deeply telling of the recent history of life on earth. It is a bit much to expect that our seventh graders will “buy” the idea that their lives and histories are coupled with the lives and histories of plants. And yet, such a wild idea has been the basis of the rationale for visiting Malacca with seventh grades since the first trip in 1993.
	We have often told the story of how rubber and oil palm transformed the forest landscape of Malaysia, replacing primeval native rainforest with man-made plantations of exotic plants from other continents. The rubber and oil palm are expatriates, just like us. But our encounters on the trip to Malacca have tended to emphasis the artifacts of human social history with visits to museums, houses, churches, and relic minority communities from the ages of trade and exchange. Because concepts related to the economic botany and ecological change are clearly relevant to the history of Malacca and the region, we have variously included side trips to plantations, a forest reserved, a farm, and a market. We have tried to forge interdisciplinary links with the scientific context of our rationale, but we have also had difficulty maintaining the pedagogical values of inquiry and firsthand experience in those activities most obviously linked to science. The difficulty has arisen primarily from the short periods of time and limited activity available at the “science” sites.
	We would like to avoid the trend to view our trip as bound to a single subject like social studies. Through this proposal we hope to restore and rejuvenate the importance of the coupled history and ecology of people and plants in our students’ own firsthand experience.
The new site: Gunung Ledang is the tallest mountain in Johor state at 1276 meters above sea level. Near the historic city of Malacca, the mountain (also called Mount Ophir) figures in Malay legends and folklore. It is clearly visible from the Straits of Malacca and has served from ancient times as a navigator’s landmark. The important British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, visited the mountain in 1854 on a collecting expedition after a stay in Singapore (which included a visit to Bukit Timah). In The Malay Archipelago Wallace writes of the scene atop Mount Ophir, “The afternoon was clear, and the view fine in its way—ranges of hill and valley everywhere covered with interminable forest, with glistening rivers winding among them.” Today the mountain is still covered in forest but sits amid an ocean of rubber and oil palm. The once interminable forest in Malaysia has been largely reduced to hill top islands. The once great Southeast Asian forest is destined to survive (if at all) only in fragments. Clouds and cold winds still haunt the peaks of Gunung Ledang and majestic trees still project a cathedral-like canopy down to the sharp boundaries of the plantations. The ominous message of the haze this year has shown us that the forest fragment at Gunung Ledang is a most precious relic. . . . 

	When the site was visited in March, we sat on the balconies of our room and heard gibbons calling in the forest. Within 20 minutes we reached the trees where the apes were feeding and calling; we continued to watch for the next hour. Leaf monkeys, innumerable forest birds, frogs, and insects were in abundance along the trails near the resort. We encountered Malay bomors extracting medicinal plants in the forest and thus demonstrating an important indigenous value of the increasingly rare habitat. It is truly remarkable to reach such magnificent forest with such ease.

	The proposal goes on to outline various activities and advantages. The Board approved extra night and additional venue and in the fall of 1998, seventh grade faculty and students began to plan the trip for February 1999.
In response to various kinds of dissatisfaction with activities designed for previous trips, both faculty and students worked toward a new but mutually meaningful context. A “kids’ council” was formed briefly to seek input on the forms of work students might find engaging. Faculty complaints from earlier trips mostly targeted the inadequacy of historical inquiry by tour guide, worksheet, and dusty museum. Much discussion centered on finding a contrivance that would bring to into dual focus the rationale for the trip and an outcome that would be valued by students, teachers, parents, and administrators.
A scenario was developed and critiqued by the kids’ council. An integrated environmental simulation was selected as the organizing structure for the seventh grade trip to Malacca.
The scenario and assignment follow:

Welcome to Malacca!

Background:  The Rock and Roll Roller Coaster Company (RRRCC) is planning on opening a HUGE amusement park in SE Asia, and have been looking at many different places to build it. This park is going to be awesome, it will feature the world’s fastest roller coaster, the tallest ferris wheel, and a new anti-gravity motion simulator. After extensive research, market studies, and study, RRRCC has narrowed their search to three potential building sites:

1.	Downtown Malacca
2.	A Malay Village Farm
3.	The Gunung Ledang Rainforest

Your assignment:

As we explore these three areas, your job will be to gather data, information, statistics, photographs, evidence, facts, drawings, and writings which support the preservation of these three areas. Upon your return to Singapore,  your family will be assigned one of these locations and be required to create a multi-media persuasive presentation which supports the preservation of your location. This argument will be presented to a panel of judges and should focus on the merits of your location (rather than focusing on the negatives of the other two sites). The best three arguments will advance to the “finals” which will be a presentation of your argument during Malacca Night.

	Preparation for the trip took place in regular classes and in special sessions. In seventh grade science students conducted plant diversity surveys at a market near the school. They had also developed projects focused on the school forest, plant propagation, and the history of plant exchanges and invasions. In connection with other classes, clubs, and independent projects, students had visited several locations in Singapore that could serve as comparison and familiarization sites for those to be visited in Malacca, such as, the forest reserves at Bukit Timah and MacRitchie Reservoir, Fort Canning Park with a spice garden, the purported tomb of Parameswara, and the story of the founding of Malacca, and ethnic neighborhoods, like Little India.
	The follow excerpts come from pieces of science writing composed by a seventh grader before the trip to Malacca:

	Now we’re studying the wild world of plants. . . .
	It’s amazing what some plants can do. Different plants can do different things. Some can survive just with their trunk. Some eat other than the normal plant food (sugar water). Some have seeds that can last a long time without starting to grow. Since I’m living in a rain forest, I should be seeing a lot of cool, unique plants. I’m not because I’m not going outside into the jungle that much and I don’t know much about that stuff.
	On the trip to the near jungle, Dr. F. pointed out some pitcher plants. I could have seen them on my own because I know what a pitcher plant is. It’s just that I have terrible eyesight in the jungle. It’s really hard for me to pick out different plants. Through my eyes all the plants seem just pushed together forming the jungle. It would have been awesome to see Venus Fly Traps. I don’t think they are any more vicious than pitcher plants, but the spikes on the tip of its mouth make it look cool. Kind of like sharp teeth. Both eat bugs. They both attract bugs with a sweet syrup and then trap the bug. A bug can’t get out of a pitcher plant because the walls of the insides are so slippery. A bug can’t get out of a Venus Fly Trap because its mouth closes and its “teeth” clench together forming a jail for the sorry, little bug that should know by then that it is going to be digested . . . ALIVE!
	Recently we have been talking about biological invasion. This happens so much of the time we don’t even notice it. It has led to plagues, famines, and prosperity. It has helped countries and hurt countries. I think without biological invasions, the world would be much harder to live in. . . .

	These days there is so much to write about science it’s unbelievable. About a week ago, we began to venture out of the classroom a lot. We went into the jungle a couple of times to take samples. Along the way we saw some pitcher plants and bright yellow flowers.
	The samples we took were little foot long part of a tapioca stem. When we started collecting them I knew we were going to set them in water and watch them grow. Michael and I got a stem section that is twenty-four centimeters long, about one centimeter wide, and had eighteen little stubs. Six stubs were bigger than the rest. When we got back to the class I made predictions that out of the eighteen stubs, the six larger stubs would grow new, little, green branches and start another plant. I thought little roots would also grow out of the bottom. When I came back after the weekend, my predictions were correct except there weren’t any roots. Only little, bright green stubs were growing out of the old ones. It was like life was breaking out of its shell. A few days later, I noticed that little white dots were appearing on the part of the stem that was submerged under water. I guessed these were the things taking the nutrients out of the water so that the plant could grow. I’m predicting in about a week these little dots will be growing little strings out into the water (roots). 	
	
	Spices were very important in Europe because there was no refrigeration for meats. Spices would wash away the stench of old meat and keep it edible. I think if I were some European shipping merchant that wanted to become rich instantly. I would magically invent the greenhouse and start growing spices. I would sent a special ship over to secretly bring over the seeds of the spices. I would grow the spices in that one greenhouse and when I had enough money, I’d just keep making more greenhouses.

The excerpts suggest that the student has a remarkable level of introspection as well as a basic orientation toward issues, questions, and stories connected with the extended field trip to Malacca.   
	Students were organized into groups for the trip. Each student took on a predefined role within the group. The roles were: Cartographer, geographer, historian, economist, cultural anthropologist, naturalist, aesthetician, infra-structure assessor, and agronomist. These roles had been negotiated from planning sessions with faculty and with the kids’ council. Instructional time was rearranged so that specialist groups could meet to define roles more precisely and to practice requisite skills. Various teachers took charge of designing the instruction for respective specialties. Not only did the special sessions focus on skills and techniques, but the values associated with each specialty were also explored. The seventh grade specialists set out investigative protocols they hoped to follow on the trip itself. Teachers had decided that students should not have to build an argument for the destruction the forest, farm, or city to make way for the amusement park, but only develop a case for preserving one of the target sites. The rationale for this approach was based on a feeling that an emphasis on the positive values of a place would be consistent with developmentally appropriate practice. Such a decision reveals a bit of the complexity involved in the contrivance of the amusement park scenario and assignment. Groups also met before the trip to brief each other on the specialties of the respective members and to brainstorm the outline of some arguments for the preservation of the forest, the farm, and the city.
	Around two hundred fifty seventh graders took the trip. The students were divided into two shifts. One embarked a day later than the first and visited sites on a schedule that kept the shifts from flooding a venue with double busloads of middle schoolers. A travel agency supplied guides for each bus and made the arrangements for transportation, tours, meals, and lodging. On past trips, tour guides had become the primary sources of information that students sought in their efforts to complete prescribed assignments. In some cases, small groups of students would grill the guides in an attempt to finish work as soon as possible, perhaps so there would be more time for informal social activity. The assignment connected with the amusement park scenario demanded more inquiry than past trips. While tour guides presented information on the trip in the manner to which they had been accustomed, they also tried to cope with more probing questions posed by students trying on the lenses of a multi-disciplinary environmental impact team.

The trip.

	Hari Singh begins his running commentary after the students clear immigration and customs for Singapore and Malaysia and board the air conditioned buses. Buildings, dates, and events are described in the guide’s register. Seventh graders retreat into games, books, talk with friends, and prodigal provisions of snacks. They seldom look out the windows. As we pass Gunung Pulai, a forested mountaintop surrounded by a sea of oil palms, Singh intones, “This is a forest reserve.” After two hours we arrive at a small holding where the Malay farm family has also begun to cultivate tourism. A hundred and twenty five seventh graders mill about the grounds, wander into the farmhouse, and listen to the guides as they point out black pepper, cacao, oil palm, rubber, chili, and more of the mixed flora of a typical Malay village farm/garden. Teachers remind the students to don their specialist hats and to begin their inquiries.
	The farm matron has set out stem cuttings of tapioca and sets of keladi (Colocasia sp.) for the students to plant. She stands next to an oil palm, holding a cutlass nearly a meter long. She looks bemused as Hari Singh gives directions for handling the propagules. Tapioca has been planted back at the school, but this feature of the tour has been arranged by the agency to accommodate the new focus on more activity and inquiry on the trip. “You get to choose. Don’t rush. Don’t destroy it. Tapioca, Keladi,” Singh regales.

	Jasmine talks to the camera incorporating some of the lecture she has just heard into her emerging solution for the scenario:

This is the peat soil, right? And it pushes you down. So if you build the fact--, the thing here, it will push down. It presses it down. So it’s not very good for building the place here. And it’s really good soil for growing stuff. So why should we like just take it out?

	Later Jasmine describes what she has learned of the economy of the small farm:

They sell thirty pieces of pineapple and thirty pieces of coconut in a day. And they sell like three to four kilos of coffee in a month.

	Singh continues in his discussion of the farm and the environment:

In Sumatra, they have old forests as well and they cleared it. They didn’t have the people on standby and the soil actually catched fire and you can’t put it out. (Singh is referring to a terrible haze that covered the region from fires in Borneo and Sumatra that year.) . . . Rubber and palm oil are cash crops. You have to specialize in something and that brings two thirds of the income to this family.

	Several students comment after their visit:

RF: What did you notice?
Angie: Some stuff in the house. How every room is fringed in blue curtain.
	
Sheila: It’s more like a farm in Sri Lanka.
RF: How so?
Sheila: The way that the crops are planted right outside the house.

RF: What did you see?
Roy: It was hot.
RF: But what do you notice about the farm?
Roy: How they could make money with all their crops. Their cash crops.
RF: What was their main crop?
Roy: Oil palm
RF: What do you have in your hand?
Roy: One of those rice cake things.
RF: What do they make that out of?
Sal: Coconut leaves.
RF: What did you notice about the farm?
Sal: The soil. It was really soft, and the guide said you could plant anything in it. Tapioca and yams!

	The buses load up again and travel to Malacca. The first stop in the city is at the remaining gate of the fortress first built by the Portuguese, then passed on to the Dutch and eventually controlled and destroyed by the British. Near the gate is a full-sized replica of the Sultan’s palace that had been standing when the Portuguese conquered the city in 1511. The building serves as a cultural and historical museum. Near the palace is a museum celebrating the birth of modern Malaysia and the end of British rule. On top of the hill are the remains of a Catholic church established by the Portuguese. It had been de-sanctified after the Portuguese lost power. Inside the ruins are enormous gravestones propped against the wall. Most are written in Dutch and English. Vendors and artists sell their wares inside and outside the church. A statue of St. Francis Xavier, with one arm broken away, stands outside the walls of the old church, gazing across the famous estuary into the Straits of Malacca. A busker sings “American Pie.” In spite of the haze, one can see across the silted estuary into the Straits of Malacca. The children pile out of the buses exhausted from the ride but excited to walk around. They climb the hill, spend money on souvenirs and drinks, and barely acknowledge their teachers’ admonitions to gather information to bolster the cases they are building for preserving important places from the contrived amusement park. 
	Later in the day a student recounts the events:

RF: Tell me about today.
Krishnan: Today? OK. Today we got on the bus and we moved around. And first we visited the---
Ben (in background): Malay farm.
Krishnan: Oh yeah. And we found some interesting things like (smiles) plants and pineapples and juice and then after that the Famosa Hill Fortress and then we found a nice statue of a guy who was missing his arm and beautiful paintings and a very nice church. Old, of course. 
	      
	The morning begins with a visit to a local market. As mentioned before, all the students had visited a local market in Singapore. The central market in Malacca is much larger and full of sights, sounds, and smells to assault the senses. At one stall, a product of the forest is being sold (petai = Parkia speciosa).

RF: What are you doing, Mrs. C.?
AC: I’m eating this wild fruit.
RF: What is that?
AC: Petai.

RF: Tell us what you know about it, Kathy.
(Jasmine walks in front of the camera making a face and showing her tongue and the partially chewed material.)
Jasmine: How do you get rid of it? It tastes nasty.
RF: Kathy, what do you know about it?
Kathy: It grows on trees in the jungle and it’s bat-pollinated and (makes an “I don’t know” gesture.)
RF: What did you say—after you eat it, what happens?
Kathy: It’s present in your urine like asparagus. You can smell it in your pee.

	After the market, various sites are visited in the city. There is a tour up the Malacca River. The estuary has received the eroded soil of the deforested interior so that no vessels can enter the historic port. The guide on the boat, who can say thank you and goodbye in fifty different languages lectures over the engine noise:

So we will give them whatever they want and they will give mangrove poles, charcoal, and timber. The mangrove poles we will use them for construction piling. They never get rotten. 

At another point along the river, the guide explains, “If you see any mango leaves in front of the house door, belongs to the Hindus.” He points out features of Chinese houses, Malay houses, and innumerable curiosities that line the banks of the slow moving river. Students are taken to several places that serve to represent several of the minority communities in Malacca. The Chitty Melaka live in a neighborhood named for a drunk elephant. Groups crowd inside of a home, sitting on the floor in a living room, photographs of ancestors, children, and weddings decorate a cabinet. The temple at the end of the lane is closed. A leader of the community speaks to students in his veranda, telling what he knows of his own history. A typical house of the Malaccan Peranakans has been turned into a museum. The students are herded through the rooms and a guide delivers a monotone account in English. She does not answer questions that deviate much from the script. The oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia is viewed with its mix of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Nearby an old mosque stands and displays its distinct Sumatra architecture. Just down the street is a Hindu temple. The Catholic Church that serves the Eurasian community is explored briefly. The statue of Mary has an uncanny resemblance to Kwan Yin. There is an unusual reclining statue of the entombed Christ. 
The students gather a few times during their time in the city to debrief and discuss their observations and ruminations in regard to the amusement park. At one discussion, Mrs. C. begins:

AC: (reading the local newspaper) They are actually thinking about putting an entertainment park in Malaysia. Inside they are planning to put a nature park. Actually, your simulation that you’re doing. For real life—a multi-million dollar amusement park project.

	The discussion moves to some of the scenes from the day that have aesthetic appeal. Shahid talks about the market, examining his own reactions and perceptions:

Shahid: They’re used to it. It’s how they live their lives. The fish scaling guy (gestures vigorously)—scales flying everywhere and people walking by and not paying attention and I’m like standing there hesitating to go over there.
AC: The motion and skill of that can be very beautiful. You watch it and they can be so dexterous.

	Tommy seems contemplative as he recalls the market. The diversity of products matches the diversity of the customers but puzzles him.

There’s all these Chinese and there’s Malay and there’s Indians and they all have these different products that are native to other different countries. Where do they get introduced to different cultures and despise them and think they’re weird?

Lin replies that, “It was their supermarket and a lot of their fruits and vegetables are fresher than our supermarket.”
Willie attempts to organize data from his day into a preliminary argument for why the city and its market should be spared from roller coaster development. 

Say we took out the market. That one lady told me she lives in Indonesia and comes here every week. And this other lady said she came for a short time from four to five. It we take that out, they don’t earn very much. That’s all they earn for what they sell.

	Shahid comments at another point in the discussion about the ‘harmony.’

There are three different colors (laughter from the group). Cultures. The Hindus, the Malay, and Chinese all have places of worship within close proximity of each other. Just basically when you take a couple of steps and there’s a Chinese temple. You walk a little bit ahead and there’s a mosque up there and you walk a bit more and there’s a Hindu temple. It gives you a sense of harmony basically.

	The first shift visited the farm, the city, and then the forest. The second reversed the order and started a day earlier. At the forest, three treks were taken, an initial walk along the rushing river to the first of several spectacular waterfalls. The place figures in Malay folklore and the tours guides attempted to tell the tale over the roar. After supper a short night hike was staged to look for insects, frogs, and other nocturnal fauna. An optional morning hike was also offered for those students who wanted to hear the dawn chorus of forest birds and possibly to see White-handed gibbons and any of several species of monkey. The forest visit had been proposed and approved as a site for an overnight stay. The following year they trip was cut back from three nights to two with the stay at Gunung Ledang removed from the itinerary. Many of the faculty who supervised the trip felt exhausted by the third night. It is possible that three treks into the forest contributed to the exhaustion. 
	Three artifacts from the forest trip illustrate some students’ responses. Each is a piece of writing submitted later for credit in science. 

Letter Describing Gunung Ledang by E.L.
Dearest Imaginary Boyfriend,
	Missing you terribly here in the forests of Gunungu. I truly wish you were here, experiencing nature’s wonder and sharing your intelligence withy me on this arduous schoolwork. We had to take a long hike out in the middle of the rainforest while it was raining, which it always does. The pathway was covered with dead leaves and puddles from the previous night rains. We often had to walk off of the concrete roads on dirt paths, which is so close to the mountain edge, that one step could cause major pain. That is one injured kid rolling down a one hundred sixty degree angle slope for ten feet. Then he/she would probably be carried off by the potent river. Luckily, nobody experienced this happening, though I was really close to being in a coma.
	Other than the dangerous hikes, the scenery was spectacular. It seemed everything was made of shades of green and brown. Except for occasional trash found on the forest floor. Anyway, when you peer at the sky, the canopy tree’s leaves seem to block most of the sun’s rays from entering our enclosed area. I’m pretty grateful it didn’t because the humidity was worse enough. Adding sun rays wouldn’t do much good. But the view above was really cool. It seemed like glitter on green paper, the glitter being the sunlight. If you look straight ahead, one would mostly see the bark of trees, except for leaves of shrubs and mosses that interfere among the brown. It’s funny how the ground and bark seem so similar though. Both brown and with dark smudges. It’s very beautiful though. Too bad I had to look down onto the ground very often because I was afraid of slipping into the river.
	When I reached the top and the end of the one hundred mile path, the view was breathtaking. It seemed like the hike, which was ‘taking’ my ‘breath’ away. The stream rushes under the bridge in which you stand on and forms a waterfall down the cliff. The roar of the powerful precipitation is so loud, that you could barely hear the chattering of the orangutans and chimpanzees on nearby trees. Far away, you could see the horizon of the canopy cover most of the view. Clouds cover the towers of trees. Plants seem to come in many different sizes and shapes. One looks like a resting butterfly as others seems like meditating Buddhas.
	In conclusion, Gunung Ledang is filled with different species that seem to getting along with each other. The local people as well as visitors don’t seem to respect the forest as much as it deserves (Trash.), though how beautiful and filled with different variety of species. It’s really sad; I wonder if the forest has to be destroyed for an amusement park. Isn’t looking at nature and riding the dangerous hiking trail enough of an amusement park?
	It’s really hard to describe to you of this magnificent view. You really got to see it to believe it. 
							Wish You Were Here!
							Love,
							Imaginary Girlfriend

Reflective Writing by C.C.

	During the visit to Gunung Ledang last week, the guides talked about how many species of plants lived in that rainforest alone. It reminded me of the science contest we had where we had to name the different plants in the school forest. A question formed in my mind: If you had enough land, would it be possible to have all the different plants in the world living together on that land?
	My first thought was this is not possible because the plants of the world grow in many different environments. Different plants also grow best in different types of soil. That would probably be the biggest reason this couldn’t happen—different environments and habitats. But when I thought about it a little bit more, I started wondering what would happen if the plants didn’t have different habitats, making it possible for this to happen.
	What would happen if all the species of plants in the world started growing together? I think that even if this did happen, it wouldn’t last very long. First of all, some plants reproduce faster than others. These plants would probably end up taking up most of the space, causing the other plants to become crowded. Some plants would be larger (like trees) and naturally take up more space. Their spreading roots might cause problems later on for smaller plants. Lastly, there are some plants that will be biological invaders—they will spread quickly and cause problems for the other plants.
	If this did happen, then there might be what I’d call a “rainforest effect.” For example, some trees would grow taller and their spreading branches would eventually form the unbrella rooftop over the soil. If this did happen, then the trees would block off most of the light, making it harder for light-dependent plants to grow. It would also create competition for for light—if a tall tree fell over and made a gap for sunlight, there would quickly be a rush to grown in that sunlight area. With so many fighting for that one spot, the one that would probably actually get the spot is the plant that can grow the fastest with little space (like a biological invader).
	The conclusion that I draw from this imaginary scenario is that it will be almost impossible because it would require an enormous piece of land with different climates/soil types. If it really did happen, then the “biological invader” type plants would dominate (plants that can adapt to new environments and reproduce quickly). I thought this was an interesting idea to think about.

Gunung Ledang

Green sparticles of the future,
Even if there is no future we still have now.
We have today’s waterfalls,
And yesterday’s trees.
They come together as now,
Now where’s the future?
Wobbling down the muddiness of paths and imagining the future when you’re done with
This ordeal.
A gibbon’s cry is like a death,
Of a feather.
For who knows where gibbons will live in the future,
Heaven?
Of will they be reincarnated to a different species?
Who knows?
Where is the future of Gunung Ledang?
Or is Gunung Ledang the ghosts of yesterday.
And are the trees the chains that exist only in our imaginations?

Insights.
	
Place, then, can be read as a geographical expression of modernity’s paradox — that tension between progress and loss — a creative yet ambivalent space carved out somewhere between the oppressiveness of the new order and the imprisonments of tradition. (Oakes, 1997)

	I have presented a collage of artifacts that span a decade of science teaching. A persistent intention in that teaching has been the school-based or contrived arrangement of place-based experiences for expatriate children. My own reflection about intentions and experiences has led at times to ambiguity, uncertainty, and contradiction as well as nostalgia, enthusiasm, and creativity. One of the values of reflection rests in the growth of new awareness. The assemblage of artifacts has enabled me to begin to examine confusions, conflations, contradictions, and unintended consequences that might be associated with pedagogies of science and place. Paradox and irony are closely linked in my own semantics. There is a range of interpretation of the relationship between the terms (Brooks, 1949; Brooks, 1951; Bredin, 1999). Both paradox and irony involve built-in or inherent contradiction. In my mind, paradox seems more connected with a situation and leads to either paralysis of thought or wonder. Paradoxes can be devastating or delightful. Irony seems to carry a value judgment and suggests the (tongue-in-cheek) possibility of a universal connecting principle.
	Perhaps one of the initial ironies is that the distinction between paradox and irony is not so interesting as is the discovery of built-in contradictions, contrarieties, and unintended consequences. The distinctions between paradox and irony in philosophy and rhetoric seem simplistic compared to the appearance of paradox and irony in biology and history. In terms of science teaching, I think the influence of work on students’ conceptions (misconceptions, alternative conceptions, preconceptions, naïve conceptions, etc.) has set the stage for educational paradoxes and ironies. Many of the efforts to understand students’ ideas and students’ thinking resulted in ‘lessons’ that challenged the pre-existing ideas science teachers had held about learning.

•	Students’ errors are not stupid mistakes but originate from efforts to make sense.
•	Students’ ideas are strongly held and resistant to change even in the face of contradictory evidence and explicit instruction that points out the contradictions.
•	Students will try to make sense of information from experience and exposition but the sense they make may very likely diverge from what the teacher has in mind.

Contemporary recommendations from science educators emphasize the importance of students’ sense-making: 

Inquiry into authentic questions generated from student experiences is the central strategy for teaching science. (National Science Education Standards, 1995
 < http://books.nap.edu/html/nses/html/3.html > )

 Tensions can arise for teachers who oscillate between fostering what they hope is genuine inquiry on the part of their students and instilling ideas and practices that they imagine are critical to their students’ success in science. Ball (2000) studied three middle-school teachers and their relationships-with-nature in both personal and classroom contexts. She notes some deep contradictions and writes in her conclusion:

Educators at all levels should think deeply about what going “too far” means in their work. Individuals that voice environmental concerns encounter internal and external limits to their actions. Moments of going “too far” may be very productive starting points from which individuals can consider their own beliefs and valuations in relationship with people and with nature. Furthermore, “too far” can illuminate the limits of current world view, highlighting important moments of transgression that offer important models for the future. For example, environmental commitment clashes with goals of student empowerment and voices are heard, but it is understood not all positions are viable for our collective future. (p. 226)

Through reflection arising from her research, Ball reaches a personally sobering realization:

	As a teacher educator for public schools in a social democracy, I deeply wanted to believe schools could foster the individual changes needed for our environmental future. My conclusion is less optimistic. It is clear from this work that environmental education in schools, and the individual changes it seeks to affect, cannot offer sufficiently rapid or powerful steps toward change to avert the environmental challenges this generation will face. (p. 227)
	
	I find my own position ambiguous when I take students to special places with the dual goals of helping them connect intellectually and affectively. This ambiguity has blessed and plagued my own teaching. I would claim that an emphasis on inquiry empowers students while feeling as well the need to hold students accountable for their own thinking. A related tension comes from the sometimes contrary directives of teaching: Preserving and honoring the old stories while provoking and fostering the new ones.
Gruenewald (in press) attempts to find common ground between critical and place-based pedagogies. He does point out the potential for an inherent contrariety.

Because of critical pedagogy’s strong emphasis on transformation, the question—What needs to be conserved?—takes on special significance to a critical pedagogy of place. This question does not imply political and ideological alignment with those typically labeled “conservatives.” Instead, it problematizes this political category by challenging everyone, from radicals to reactionaries, to specifically name those aspects of cultural, ecological, and community life that should be conserved, renewed, or revitalized. Of course, identifying what needs to be conserved requires the kind of deep critical reflection and dialogue that form the foundation of critical pedagogy. Only now, critical thought is employed to name and recover those aspects of community life that truly contribute to the well-being of all people and the places they inhabit. . . . Of course, critical pedagogues might respond, conserving and renewing cultural practices that contribute to the well-being of people and places may often require transforming existing practices.

	Sobel (1996) offers another kind of paradox for educators. He claims that imposing a serious discussion of severe environmental problems on the very young is counter productive. Instead of fostering deep concern for the environment, stories of environmental disaster and impending catastrophe will prevent children from connecting with and caring for nature. A developmentally appropriate approach would help children experience the natural world directly with an emphasis on wonder, beauty, and emotional connection. 
	In reviewing the particular firsthand encounters I have arranged for students so that they would have meaningful experiences with the specific elements of a particular place, I have begun to question whether my intention was to foster connections with a place or whether I was trying to look for or point to some lesson on a grand scale. Do the particulars of a place have worth in and of themselves or do they only gain value once they have become emblems and illustrations? 

On Finding the Ant Plant Dischidia in an Abandoned Plantation Forest
in Singapore

From Heaven it fell, the day of the trip 
As my students trudged through a jungle of their imagination 
And I wished there were a lesson in a tropical storm 
Believe it or not 
I had found an article about it the year before 
In the New York Times 
And had saved it 
Surely, today’s seventh graders can struggle through newspaper 
As well as they can trudge through forest 
But who would believe it? 
Certainly not the boy who thought flour came from a box 
That this ant plant sent roots into its own leaves 
That’s not what we learn in school 
Leaves are up and roots are down 
What kind of teacher is this forest? 
What stories are being told there? 
Maybe we should be afraid 
And tear it down so we won’t 
Have ants in our houses 
Or live like ants inside of leaves 
Or be ants 

	My own experience of place is filled with irony. As someone who grew up in a racist southern society, I made the pilgrimage to Africa. My own attempts to develop a place-based pedagogy began with displaced expatriate students. Their connection with the specific place of their residence situates them within the tradition of traders, invaders, disturbers, and transformers. Our specimens of study included exotic plants, biological invaders, relics of disturbance and contrivances of preservation like museums, zoos, gardens, and reserves. Was there a hidden but harmonious message that the seventh graders were somehow like the tapioca and tilapia? The outcome of a place-based pedagogy seems even more problematic. The families of the children are often supported by work in businesses and industries that are involved in the extraction and exploitation of resources of the region. In Singapore we were all particularly immersed in a stream of history where the humans were disturbers and exploiters. What and where are the pedagogical parameters of sustainability?
	Tenney (1997) examines the unintended consequences of human efforts to control the material world. He speaks of “revenge effects” wherever humans engage in change.

	The real revenge is not what we do intentionally against one another. It is the tendency of the world around us to get even, to twist our cleverness against us. Or it is our own unconscious twisting against ourselves. Either way, wherever we turn we face the ironic unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity—revenge effects they might be called.  (p. 6)

Tenney goes on to devote several chapters in his book to the unintended consequences of human actions in the environment, including the introduction of species, the evolution of drug-resistant pathogens, toxic spills into delicate ecosystems, etc. Tenney’s terminology of ‘revenge’ adds a sharp connotation to the ironic consequences of human intentions and actions.
	Connell has investigated the maintenance of biological diversity in a variety of ecosystems from coral reefs to rainforests. His 1978 paper proposed the “intermediate disturbance hypothesis” which offers the explanation that disruptions of an optimum magnitude can keep biodiversity high. Disturbances that are too large bring catastrophic change while disruptions that are too small do not affect an ecosystem’s transformation to a climax community of lowered biodiversity. A fruitful speculation might examine potentially sustainable practices in terms of the maintenance of optimum levels of disturbance. The juxtaposition of contrarieties seen in symbiosis, in predator-prey relationships, in the interaction of genotype and environment, and in evolution itself might offer inspiration from the metaphorical to the literal for the resolution of the paradoxes of disturbance and sustainability. Balance, harmony, and sustainability may arise from the tension between disturbance and preservation.
Can school-based contrivance lead to real connection? Can science education in school lead to ecological and cultural sustainability? Who conducts the accounting? In the artifacts produced by students, several patterns can be drawn. Direct encounters with the phenomena of place are not immediately comfortable. For some, the overwhelming memory includes heat, insects, frustration, and exercise. When salient entities like the durian, spiders, or petai are met, the initial reactions involve repulsion and alienation. I sometimes wonder if the direct experiences heighten the definition of difference more than they foster connection. Several of the artifacts do provide evidence that some of the students have become familiar with specific organisms on a first-name basis. And they do experience the joy of recognition when they find a species in a new location. But the familiarity may have the same ambiguity as my own, where such knowledge becomes a symbol or representation of some other grander idea. Students’ innocent parodies of didactic terminology and bittersweet errors of detail reveal the stronger urge to find significance in a representation rather than in the thing itself. The letter to a boyfriend from Gunung Ledang has orangutans and chimpanzees brachiating in the trees; the fish theories show a diversity of meaning making that cannot all be the case. Efforts to contrive authentic experiences relied on ubiquitous invasive species, relic pockets of nature, degraded ecosystems, places and edifices constructed from tour guide history, and the very instruments of unsustainable change that allow access to rare, isolated, damaged, and threatened locales. 
When connections do seem evident for the seventh grade students, those connections do not necessarily conform to the teacher’s own ambivalent predilections. When ironies appear, I find the discovery as fascinating as the new noticing of a previously hidden pattern—like the details of phyllotaxy in the architecture of a familiar plant—and as intriguing as the intricate details of some three-way symbiosis of what had seemed to be nondescript organisms. In the following short essay, the student-author connects her life to the lives of plants and animals moved around the world. She describes her two mothers and has perhaps understood without the paralysis of paradox, the wonderful and awful complexity of life on earth. Hers is an essay I have often returned to when contemplating my seventh graders’ sense of place in a strange land.

How the movement and trade of plants and animals in the world has affected my life

 . . . Around the sixteenth century, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and many other spices were located in only several places in this vast sphere of blue and green land and life forms. Now, because of trade, a spice can be planted in someone’s backyard, or bought at the supermarket down the road for only a matter of cents, when a kernel of black pepper used to be worth the land rent. . . Today the world is a very mixed up place, though for the better or worse of it, I am not one to judge. I wake up in the morning by an alarm from a company in Japan, eat breakfast out of a bowl hand painted in Singapore, cereal from the United States, and milk from New Zealand.. . .   Christopher Columbus opened up a whole new world to everyone out of Latin America by introducing Tapioca. The tapioca came out of Latin America, then it was taken to India, and then perhaps to China and the Americas and back to Portugal.
After that, a whole new world of trade began to develop. Instead of being isolated, experiencing only what ever they took in mind to experience. Then people started to immigrate to new destinations, causing cultures, beliefs, religions, humans, animals, plans, languages, ways of life, and ideas to both mix and evolve. And from this mixture came me.
My grandfather is Scottish and my grandmother is German. After they met and married, they moved to America where my father and his siblings were born. My father then traveled to Malaysia, where he met my mother. My mother’s parents traveled from their homeland, China, to Malacca, Malaysia, where my mother and her siblings were born. There my mom and dad met, and then my mother went to the US to further her education: my father followed her. After that, they got married, and my father, after being Presbyterian for his past lifetime, cast aside his old beliefs and took on new ones. He converted to Buddhism, my mother’s religion.
I was born in China by a young mother who gave me to the care of an old woman, who raised me for adoption. When I was two months old, I was adopted by a couple everyone stared at: a Caucasian male and a Chinese female, both of whom could speak several languages. . . . I have been many places in my life, and seen many things, for all my twelve years. I have a very rich, complex background, and if not for the movement and trade that has been going on for the past few hundred years, none of it would exist.

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